The Guy
by Qhornn
Summary: After a long journey, our hero has finally challenged N, king of Team Plasma; however, the outcome of the battle is darker than expected. With defeat damning them all, the trainer and his pokemon must scour the world for a place that they belong, but not before righting what has been wronged...
1. Chapter 1: A Volatile Defeat

1 - A Volatile Defeat

Dull crashing sounds echoed throughout the stone-crafted halls of that magnificent castle. Hallway after hallway within its walls was devoid of people, pokemon, or any lesser form of visible life. As each crash roughly shook the paintings and decorative vases that provided the room with a feel of regal dignity, the movements made the castle feel alive and active, though trembling curtain rails and rickety end-tables expressed the castle's fear over the explosive power being unleashed within its uppermost chamber.

There were no guards in sight anywhere in the lower or middle regions of the fortress. Either they were dismissed for forthcoming events or were defeated at the hands of that lone child who rampaged through its halls. The child had become greatly intertwined with the ambitions of Team Plasma over his time as a pokemon trainer that had only just begun to bloom a few months prior. Each challenge that awaited him on his journey was soon met by grunts and leaders of the twisted organization, and he found himself being dragged into their affairs with no choice but to fight back. It quickly became apparent that he and his pokemon had become the strongest force in the Unova region against Team Plasma, and he had to be the one to ultimately challenge their king.

Another violent crash shook the castle halls. The battle had been raging for several short minutes, but the powers that exploded in that room were brutal and lethal. At this magnitude of power, the first person to make a mistake would pay a heavy price. But it's not always a mistake that costs a person a battle. There are instances within the world where it does not matter who is strongest or who has the most cunning skill. Sometimes, there is only luck.

"Dodge it Scrafty!" he desperately yelled.

In a brilliant flash of bright blue light, Zekrom unleashed her signature move. Draconic electricity roared within the tall, echoing chamber as electricity engulfed her entire body before she launched herself toward the injured Scrafty. The Fusion Bolt only glanced Scrafty's left arm, but the brief contact was enough. The dragon's electricity bolted through her in a torrent of static shock, burning every nerve in her body as the crackling ball of energy that was Zekrom crashed into the ground nearby. Pulsing blue sparks danced across the white stone room, lighting up the white pillars that held the ceiling above their heads in a display that was as beautiful as it was terrifying. Scrafty trembled and shook in uncontrollable pain as she fell to the ground in an electrified, twitching heap.

"No! Scrafty!" the trainer yelled as he ran to her. "Are you ok?" he asked in a panicked voice as he lifted her head gently off of the stone floor. Scrafty looked at him weakly, clearly unable to move a muscle. With sweat running off of his face and onto his black hoodie, the trainer frantically searched his bags for a way to aid the situation. Empty canisters of Full Restores and Full Heals fell out of his bag and made a hollow "thunk" as they hit the floor. Beneath his drained reserves of healing potions, there wasn't a single Revive to be found. He paused, eyes shocked at the realization of what was to come.

"So that's it then," said N from behind.

His eyes went back to Scrafty. She was his last pokemon. N had already taken out his Serperior, Gigalith, Reshiram, Musharna, and Durant with Zekrom alone. With no revives or even an ounce of bitter Revival Powder left, there was nothing more he could do; he had lost. His heart raced as the magnitude of the situation sunk into his mind. The foundation of the battle was to decide the fate of the world, to decide the fate of the relationship of trainers and their pokemon - to decide the fate of life as they knew it. The clash of the legendary dragons and their trainers replicated that of the battle that occurred so many years ago; however, this time there was a darker outcome. The dice were rolled, and the trainer had a stream of unlucky breaks as Zekrom landed critical hit after critical hit upon Reshiram, his strongest weapon.

"There is no doubt now," said N with a bright, almost manic expression on his face. His eyes were ablaze with pride, accomplishment, and anticipation as he raised his arms above his head, basking in the glory of his victory. "I _am _the hero of legend! I have befriended the great Zekrom through purity of heart. I have rescued countless pokemon from their evil trainers. And now, with Zekrom by my side, I will command _all_ trainers of the world to relinquish their pokemon! No longer will they be forced to fight for trainers' amusement. Team Plasma will ensure all pokemon and humans are separated forever!"

With the same flaring passion in his eyes, N looked at the defeated trainer and shook his head, a look of disappointment, pity, and puzzlement mixing with his unmistakable pride.

"It will hurt me to see you separated from your pokemon. They fought with such valor, such vigor. I've never seen such determination in all my life. Despite all of the hardships you have gone through, they still appear to be happy." His gaze drifted to the trainer's bleeding Scrafty. "Even now, in their battered and broken state, I can hear them weakly begging me to allow you to keep them enslaved." He closed his eyes and looked away, contemplating all that had happened. "I can't understand why they choose to stay by your side..."

"They're my best friends!" the trainer desperately yelled, agonized by N's persistent train of thought. "They stay with me because we've been through so much together! We mutually love each other no matter what we go through. How is that so hard to understand?!" He held the now unconscious Scrafty close to him.

N continued to look away.

"No matter what happens, I will never leave my pokemon's side, and they'll never leave mine. We don't care if you are the most powerful trainer in the world! We are all prepared to be dragged down to hell so long as it means we're falling together!"

N opened his eyes and glanced back toward the trainer. "We'll see about that," he said, coldly.

Suddenly, a young man with white hair appeared through the large ornate doorway. Disregarding the battle that had just taken place, he ran to the center of the room and took a knee before N. Judging by his cloak, he appeared to be one of the sages. "Lord N," he immediately addressed.

N kept his eyes on the trainer for a long silent moment before turning to the man.

The young man with white hair spoke with his eyes down toward the floor. "I have recovered the Dusclops you have requested. The trainer was...complicated, but was no trouble." He held up a shaking Pokeball. It seemed to be holding a pokemon struggling to break free. The trainer couldn't help but stare at it. It felt as if the pokemon within was screaming, killing its lungs by pouring every ounce of its being into desperately trying to escape from its captor.

N took the struggling Pokeball out of the man's hand and put it on his belt quickly and without much thought. "Very good. Your work is once again excellent. Always on time you are." N spoke quickly, clearly not focused upon the man or his accomplishment, but upon his most recent triumph. He looked at the trainer in silence for an uncomfortably long moment before looking back at the man. "I have a favor to ask you."

The trainer began to tune them out as he tended to his Scrafty's wounds. With no Full Restores left, he was unable to properly mend her injuries, although it wouldn't work without a proper Revive due to the extent of her damage. He unzipped and removed his black hoodie. Beneath it was a plain gray T-shirt. He rolled the hoodie into what seemed to be a bandage. He took her broken, bleeding arm in his hand, holding the hoodie with his teeth. Propping her arm against his leg, he began to wrap the hoodie around her wounds. Whether it was luck or skilled first aid, Scrafty's arm was properly wrapped without further injury, despite her bones being severed in three locations. He held his fallen pokemon against him and lightly stroked her head, wishing the battle had turned out in his favor so his pokemon did not have to suffer such punishment. The guilt, the unrelenting feeling of self-blame, it was the feeling that could only be felt by one who has watched their most loved ones suffer in their own name.

N began to walk away from the kneeling man, motioning for Zekrom to follow. "Come Zekrom. We have demands to make." He began to walk toward the balcony opposite the front door, leaving the trainer with his broken friends.

Zekrom looked at the trainer questionably as she turned around to follow N. As they reached the balcony, she placed N on her shoulders in preparation for flight. The two flew away off the balcony at blinding speeds, blasting the room with a powerful gale.

The man with white hair nodded at the sages in the back of the room, then focused his attention on the trainer. The trainer swallowed a pit of fear as the man approached him.

"Calm down" The man said as he presented an outstretched hand. "Relax child. No harm will come to you. Come with us, do as we say, and you can leave here today with no worries."

The trainer looked at the man's outstretched hand, disgusted. What was this supposed to be? Some kind of sick charity? He was not to cooperate in any way with Team Plasma, not after the horrors he had seen during his travels. There were far too many occasions where Team Plasma offered "friendly propositions". Whether this man was calm and cool-headed didn't make a difference; he wouldn't trust any of them.

A spark of defiance glimmered in the trainer's eye. "Back off. I may have lost, but I don't care. You Team Plasma jerks can go jump after your 'master' if you follow him so blindly. I'm not going anywhere with you bastards." He looked away and held Scrafty closer to him.

The man seemed to be taken aback at the trainer's resistance. "Harsh words. Lord N made the right choice in battling you." He stood up and took back his hand. "Fine then. Have it your way."

The trainer expected immediate physical retaliation, but the man only stared at him. He then turned to the sages, signaling them to take action. The sages simultaneously began to walk toward the trainer, passing the white-haired sage without looking at him. Without turning around, the white-haired sage lifted his hand and ordered, "Bring him to the holding chambers. Lord N has demanded it."

The trainer flinched as he realized one of the approaching sages was holding heavy black chains, clearly intending to bind him into submission. In a panic, he swiftly grabbed a Pokeball on his belt, pointing it at his resting, bandaged Scrafty. A quick red beam hit her, and she dispersed into energy before being pulled into her Pokeball where she'd be safe.

Before he could react, the largest of the sages grabbed him by his shoulders as a second sage held up the black chains. "You can't do this!" the trainer yelled, furiously kicking trying to break free of the sages as they painfully chained his hands together. His vicious struggling and reckless anger were visible in his face; his teeth nearly cracked as he grinded them in fury and pain. "This isn't right! Let me go you blind, misled drones!" Almost mechanically, the sages began to drag him by the chains across the floor, their faces expressionless and soul-lacking. Despite his desperate flailing, they pulled him through the large entrance and into the ornate hallway he had charged through before his showdown with N.

The trainer continued struggling to break free of the chains as the sages dragged him away, but the chains were too sturdy and grinded against his wrists until they began to bleed. As they began to move through the castle halls, Team Plasma grunts and elites looked on in awe and humor at the child who challenged their master. Their whispers were badly suppressed and he could hear all of the humiliating comments they made as he slid past them, leaving a small trail of blood droplets. The trainer helplessly looked at them as they murmured to each other, never looking away from him. '(Shut up…)' he thought.

They turned a corner, revealing more grey-hooded spectators. "Isn't that the guy who ran through here earlier?"

'(Shut up…!)'

"Yeah, I remember him. He beat me in a battle…"

Their voices were maddening. '(Shut up!)'

"Dang. Lord N must have whooped him good."

"_Shut up!"_ He screamed with all the force he could. All of the Team Plasma spectators, with the exception of the sages that dragged him, flinched at his outburst. The trainer glared at them with all of his hate, visualizing horrible and brutal ends to all of them from his anger-clouded mind. The silence persisted for a few moments until one executive spoke out.

"It's over, kid. Even if you're the guy with Reshiram by his side, Lord N is a visionary. You lost. Just accept it."

The trainer's black-rimmed eyes stared psychotically at the man for a moment, but he was unmoved. The look in the executive's eyes was blunt, but truthful. There was no way around what had happened. Tears welled in his exhausted eyes until his vision became blurred. His chest became heavy and pressured. In a monumental feeling of failure and sorrow, the trainer wept.


	2. Chapter 2: Division

2 - Division

A light trail of young blood trailed through the castle halls where the sages had pulled the trainer by his bleeding, chained wrists. There were many Team Plasma underlings who stopped and stared for some time, but one of the sages barked at them to disperse and return to their duties, leaving the trainer to weep in semi-solitude as he waited painfully for his captors to reach their destination. After dragging him across hallway after hallway, even descending stairs without so much as thinking about the trainer's condition as he fell down each stone step individually, they arrived at a heavy metal door in a rather dungeon-like portion of the lower castle. It looked thick, unyielding, and permanent, as if once you were in, you would never get out.

"Open it up," the sage holding the chains ordered. Two of the men walked forward and grabbed hold of the tarnished ring that served as a doorknob. The rusted metal hatch took the strength of both of the sages to open, rattling everybody with a savage high-pitched grinding as it turned. As the six-inch thick door opened, a wave of stale air poured down like the breath of an old man onto the trainer, almost choking him with the foul taste of contained air. Catching his breath, the trainer became disheartened to see a windowless stone room. The only source of light was from the doorway, which was shadowed by their humanoid presences. The cold black stones that make up the walls, floor, and ceiling were solid and unreflective.

Carelessly, as if handling an extra unit of baggage, they threw the trainer into the center of the prison cell.

"I...I'm not giving up my pokemon..." the trainer stammered, wincing in pain. The chains were loosened, but they had dug in all the way to the bone. Though, he didn't notice. He was only concentrating on the moment at hand.

From behind, a stone-faced sage stepped forward. He was a regal-looking elder man in what looked to be ancient clothes. The strange shapes that patterned his beige cloak were hypnotic, dizzying almost. The features of his face were sunken and shadowed, making his very presence feel foreboding and unnerving. His hardened face expressed years of dedicated work toward someone he knew was corrupted, and yet he didn't care. Looking into his eyes was like looking into a cold, dark abyss at the bottom of the ocean.

"We were ordered by Lord N to remove the pokemon in your possession," he said to the trainer. His voice was emotionless and hollow.

"And what makes you think that I would allow you thugs to do that?" he rebutted, trying to maintain some type of dominance on the situation. The trainer defiantly tried to raise his fists in front of him, but the painful chains weighed them down and kept them to his sides.

As if expecting such a response, the sage replied, in a rather irritated voice, "If you don't cooperate, we are prepared to use force." As he finished his threat, he pulled out an odd Pokeball from behind his cloak. The bottom half of it was a light shade of gray, and the top half was black as pitch. It rocked slightly as he held it in his hand.

The trainer's defiance faltered. He knew his pokemon had no strength left, and he stood no chance in a fistfight with a pokemon. His mind raced, trying to calculate his options.

"We're not giving you any time to waste. Give up your pokemon at this moment, or we will attack." There was a menacing sound pulsing off of the dark Pokeball as it rattled back and forth in the hateful man's hand. A low, devilish growl rung in the trainer's ear as the rumbling orb seemed to sway to and fro toward him.

Sweat rolled off the trainer's face, making a barely audible drip on the dry stone floor. That black Pokeball…what on earth was inside of it? It seemed as if it was trying to kill him even from within its controlling capsule. What could he possibly do if they unleashed it upon him? Could he weasel his way out of the room? What then? Certainly he couldn't escape a castle he was entirely unfamiliar with. They would surely catch him before he could make any progress, and then... The trainer swallowed for a moment, trying to control his fear. Considering his situation, running appeared to be his only option. He would have to risk his life and fight his way to the outside, or at least to a window. He would then release his pokemon to fly away on Reshiram where they could find safety, if Reshiram had the strength.

He stood, shaking. The sages were blocking the doorway from every angle, but perhaps he could get them to move somehow…

"How about this," the trainer began. "How about you come and make me surrender my pokemon? One on one, each of you tries to take me on. If you really think you're strong as a group, come fight me one on one like a real fighter!" As he barked his challenge at the sages, the heavy black chains fell to the floor. He raised his hands outward, submitting his fighting terms to his captors.

The middle sage hardly seemed amused. He held out the rumbling black Pokeball toward the trainer. "I hardly think you're in any position to make any bargains. It's common sense that a human cannot defeat a pokemon in physical hand-to-hand combat. We're holding the gun here, not you."

"_We'll se__e about that!" _the trainer roared as he sprinted toward the sage. His eyes were ablaze as he vaulted himself forward, twin trails of blood droplets flying behind him as his clenched fists prepared themselves for impact.

Shortly before landing a sharp blow to the unmoving elder sage, the burly man who dragged him through the hallways stepped forward and caught his hand which, otherwise, would have crashed perfectly into its target. His abnormally huge hand swallowed up the trainer's fist, leaving him with a shocked expression.

The giant looked down at the scrawny trainer. "Don't bother," he bellowed. Without warning, the man slung his other fist around and slammed an unnaturally powerful blow to the trainer's abdomen, making an audible "crack".

"Gwuaaaah!" All strength left his legs and arms as his vision instantly became hazy. Before he could fully register the magnitude of the damage he had just taken, the man released his hand from his massive grip. The trainer would have fallen to the floor with no support from his legs, but before he could let gravity grab a hold of him, the brutal giant heaved forward and belted the trainer straight in the chest with his knee, sending him flying back toward the wall.

His perception dimmed as time began to blur as he was flung back. His thoughts were muddled, but also rapid and traumatized. 'W…what happened…?'

His body felt as though it was drifting through the air. 'Never…never before did I fight Team Plasma members this…' His vision was unfocused and divided, but the fuzzy image of the three sages before him engraved into his mind.

'Are these really people? Nobody could possibly be willing to…' The irresolute image of the sages began to turn as his body rolled through the air.

'They're all…'

The black Pokeball emitted a low growl as it rocked toward the trainer, trying to reach him.

"Monsters…" he uttered just before his body slammed into the ground.

"Hmm, impudent child," the large man bellowed. The trainer only laid motionless on the ground, still conscious, but unable to move.

The elder sage stepped forward, his black Pokeball to his side. "Now do you understand, child? There's nothing you can do to stop us. Even if you somehow managed to escape here, Lord N has already begun the final step in our grand quest."

The trainer weakly opened his eyes and looked up. A thin line of crimson fluid ran down from his lips to his chin, while his left cheek suffered a rough scrape from the fall. Blunt pain strangled his body as he slowly unfolded himself, trying to sit upright.

"In only a few days," the sage continued, "Lord N will make his first proclamation to the world, starting with the region far west from here. Kanto, I believe it is called. And we will join him in our holy quest to create a better world."

"And what of you…?" the trainer managed to mutter despite having no air in his lungs. All eyes in the room were upon him. As he spoke, he managed to bring his broken-self up to a sitting position. "…Will all of you release your pokemon…?"

A younger sage stepped forward from the right. He had long, black hair that was pulled over his head, resembling the typical hairstyle of someone who was highly ranked in an organization. His cloak was similar to the high sage's, but it was a darker shade of green rather than beige. "But of course we will! The ultimate goal of Team Plasma is for humans and pokemon to be separated."

The trainer revealed a wretched smile. "Heh... I can see that the intelligence of your organization is centralized…" The younger man stepped back for a moment. "You're all dogs…following the orders of bigger dogs…"

At that statement, two more regal heads peered into the room from the doorway. There were a few more sages guarding the doorway from the outside. The trainer's smile remained plastered on his face.

"You can't stop people from being people…" he continued as he supported himself on one knee. "Go ahead and do what you will… As soon as people learn that you are powerless, they will take back their pokemon. No! They will rebel against you, and you will fall…"

"Do you really think we are foolish enough to neglect such an obvious error?" A sage outside of the cell barked as he joined his officers inside. His cloak was a deep shade of red with odd streaks across the bottom. He seemed to be of middle-age and clearly had more experience than the younger sage. "Team Plasma will continue to harbor pokemon with the intent of maintaining order. In time, the lack of pokemon will cause trainers to cease to exist, and nobody else in the world other than Team Plasma will know how to use pokemon to-"

"_Use_ pokemon?" The trainer interrupted.

The middle-aged man swallowed his remaining words and remained quiet. "Team Plasma…" the trainer continued, his smile returning to a frown. "Of all the corrupted organizations I have encountered during my travels, never have I met a group with such hypocrisy…" As he spoke, he rose off of his knee and shambled onto his feet, barely maintaining his stance. "N is the only person in this entire group that truly believes he is fighting for something right… The rest of you follow orders in the belief that you will have a higher standing in the 'new world'…"

All of the sages before him began to lose their composure, all except for the man holding the black Pokeball. The trainer, now hunched over in what was supposed to be a standing position, glared at him from behind his long, shaggy bangs which now loomed over his eyes.

"I don't know what's in that damned Pokeball you're holding that makes you so confident, but know this…" He closed his eyes for a moment and took in a breath. The sages' expressions became apprehensive.

As he spoke, his frayed hair shadowed his face. "People will learn of your weaknesses, of your true motives over time. It's impossible to avoid this, just as it is impossible to brainwash them all into believing you are heroes. N isn't a strong trainer, and will fall as quickly as he has risen once even a single trainer, who is stronger than me, faces him. Even with the strongest pokemon in the world at your 'disposal'," he said that word with utter disgust, "the hearts of the people and pokemon will overpower your brutal forces."

The sages became angered at his speech, with the exception of the unmoved, regal devil holding his weapon. They clenched their fists and bared their teeth, not believing that such an insolent child could be so analytical.

The trainer drew breath once more, bracing himself. "YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE WORLD WITH FORCE ALONE! AND I WILL DIE HERE TO PROTECT THE SACRED BONDS YOU ARE SEEKING TO DESTROY!" He screamed these words as powerfully as he could muster. Silence and stunning awe filled the little stone cell as the lower sages were taken aback by his spirit. His words echoed beyond the room, filling the entire castle with his death pact in a fading repetition of the words "die, protect, sacred," and "destroy".

Not a word was spoken. Defiantly standing with his arms outstretched, the child placed himself before the strongest men in the warped organization of Team Plasma. Defiance, liberty, self-sacrifice; he embodied these ideals while facing the twisted, hellish minds of the puppets before him. To challenge the train of thought of a man was to fight him at his worst, a fight to the bloody end to justify whom was right in history. He was challenging six men under these conditions, all of whom were prepared to kill.

The black Pokeball bellowed deeply from within, sending a feeling of ominousness into the air.

"Impudent WRETCH!" the younger man on the right yelled as he drew his Pokeball from his belt. The others followed as they drew their Pokeballs from their belts. The trainer closed his eyes, readying himself for whatever was going to befall him.

At that moment, a bright flash of light emanated from the trainer, instantly breaking everybody's guard. The blindingly bright light divided into six white silhouettes, taking shapes one at a time in front of him. The familiar figures before him became solid as the light died down. The white light slowly faded as their forms and colors congealed. Serperior: his glorious green serpentine body was covered in burns and cuts. Musharna: she looked less like a pink, dreaming puffball and more like a red, disfigured pillow. Gigalith: blood ran from visible cracks that were scattered across his stone body. Scrafty: her right eye was closed after having suffered a deep cut, while her limbs were rather crooked and broken. Durant: her hardened steel abdomen was noticeably dented concavely in several large locations, conceivably folding into her internals. Reshiram: his usual brilliantly white coat of fur that ran from head to toe was now a muddied mess of brownish-grey with the occasional deep red stain.

All six of them stood adamantly, ready to fight by his side despite the inconceivable pain they must have been experiencing simply by holding themselves upright.

"W-wha?" The trainer was puzzled at his pokemon's sudden entrance. Were they really prepared to fight? Their condition was possibly fatal if not treated soon, let alone if they were to engage in battle!

They were visibly shaking, clearly using immense effort just to remain conscious. Musharna couldn't even lift off the ground, but instead she attempted to hobble on her four stubby legs.

"What are all of you doing? Get back in your Pokeballs where you'll be safe!" He desperately yelled.

They appeared to ignore his order. All of their senses were upon the six men before them.

With a look of desperation in his eyes, the trainer helplessly looked to his pokemon in their defiance. "You...you all want to fight for me, even though you can barely stand?" His voice was choking up as he spoke.

The faithful pokemon looked at their trainer and let out a weak, reassuring cry. The look in their eyes glistened in the small doorway light, revealing undying loyalty. Scrafty held up her shaking arm, showing the trainer's black hoodie, still wrapped around her open wound.

Light reflected off of the trainer's hopeful eyes. He was touched at his pokemon's loyalty.

He smiled. "You see that? Pokemon and humans CAN be friends. You can't tear us apart." The trainer's confidence grew. "We'll fight 'til the very end. _Give us your worst!_" The trainer's pokemon cried out in confidence with their trainer.

The sages seemed relatively unmoved by their resoluteness. "You're a fool if you plan to fight us," the high sage began. "Look at them. These pokemon are in dire peril and are in no condition to fight. Your determination is admirable, but it's going to drag your 'friends' down to hell with you." Neither the trainer nor his pokemon backed down or showed any sign of surrender. The high sage closed his eyes in disappointment.

Opening his eyes, he looked to his right, and then to his left, calling to the sages closest to him. "Fuzh. Kell. Assist me in quelling this charade. The rest of you, continue making preparations for our final plans. I will be back momentarily." At his command, the three sages behind him left the room without looking back. The white-haired sage from earlier, Fuzh, pulled out a Pokeball from his belt loop. Afterward, the black-haired sage opposite him, Kell, drew out a Great Ball of his own. The high sage continued to hold his rumbling black Pokeball in cold assurance.

"Go Crawdaunt!" yelled Kell. "Bisharp, you're needed," from Fuzh. The pair tossed their Pokeballs shortly in front of them. In a burst of blue and yellow, a wretched Crawdaunt and composed Bisharp appeared, ready to obey their masters' commands.

A bead of cold sweat ran down the trainer's cheek at the fact that the high sage had yet to summon his pokemon. There was something about that black Pokeball that made his stomach turn… But what was it?

He tipped his hand back slightly, catching the trainer's eye. In a very slight movement, he tossed the black Pokeball between Bisharp and Crawdaunt. Just before it burst open in midair, the high sage called to it.

"Tyranitar."

The dark capsule burst open in a blast of haunting, pitch-black light. It was less than light; it was as if pure darkness had leaked out and had consumed all visible light within its reach. In the incoherent ball of shadow, a silhouette began to deform.

A spiked pair of arms.

A heavily armored pair of legs.

From the waist to the head, the black hole began to fade, slowly revealing the monster. His rock body was much darker green than most Tyranitar the trainer had seen in his day, and the armor plate on his stomach was strange. Rather than the typical blue, it was a lighter shade of gray, comparatively the same color as steel. As his abdomen became more and more visible, the trainer was shocked to see such deformities. All across his body were dozens of scars, some larger than others. What was strangest about the monster, however, was the equipment he was covered with. There were thick bands covering his wrists, his ankles, and his upper abdomen. A heavy-looking weight was strapped to his spiked back. They appeared to be Power items that were used to strengthen a pokemon by adding immense resistance to their every move. His stance seemed uninhibited by the weighted gear, and it appeared more like he was wearing artificial armor than equipment designed to hold him back. The blackness faded away completely, revealing an unscathed, crested head with eyes closed.

The trainer and his pokemon were motionless. As Tyranitar towered over most others in the small stone cell, a deathly silence had taken hold. The trainer didn't even realize he was holding his breath as he waited for something to happen. His eyes were focused upon the sealed eyes of the beast before him.

In that one movement, the trainer and his pokemon all felt their lives shorten. Tyranitar's eyes burst open, revealing the most terrifying gaze they had ever imagined. His tiny, thin, blood-red pupils focused upon the trainer's brown, human eyes. The small crescents were surrounded by a deathly violet that was close to pitch black.

His gaze transfixed the trainer, paralyzing him and robbing him of vital breath. His own eyes shook in fear at the horror he was now facing. What on earth was this demon?! It felt as though his life were being drained into those hypnotic, strangling, life-siphoning…

A sudden nudge from behind broke his trance. He nervously looked behind him to see Serperior's gaze meeting his own. Smiling, the snake nodded to him.

The trainer's lost confidence rekindled itself from his pokemon's bravery. He turned back around to face the three sages and their dark-type trio. "I hope you're not expecting mercy, because you won't find any here!"

Tyranitar beamed a toothy grin.


	3. Chapter 3: Brutality

3 - Brutality

While the outcome of the battle was rather obvious, the trainer still could not do more than stare in disbelief at how much worse his pokemon's condition became in such a short period of time. Beyond their limits, they could hardly pose a threat to the dark-typed trio before them. All three of the sages' pokemon were still standing unscathed. Crawdaunt and Bisharp had unleashed a devilish display of lethality upon Serperior, Musharna, Gigalith, Scrafty, Durant, and Reshiram; although Tyranitar did not budge. He only watched the slaughtering with a smirk, enjoying the madness as if it were a fine dish. The trainer looked down to his fallen friends; at this point, it seemed even more likely that their wounds were fatal.

The middle sage moved forward. With his hands behind his back, as if speaking during a board meeting, he said, "I think they've had enough. These pokemon would never have known such pain had you not captured them. If you had left them alone in the wild, _where they belong, _they would have been far happier."

The trainer only looked at his fallen partners in despair, his breaking point near. Most of the sage's words were but a muffled echo in the back of his mind as cold silence had settled in his conscious.

The sage shook his head in disappointment. "It's time."

At those words, the trainer jumped in front of his pokemon, desperately determined to defend them as they defended him. He was completely prepared to physically challenge the sages' pokemon, issuing a challenge that was impossible for him to ever have a hope of succeeding. Blood ran from his ravaged forearms down his fingertips, dripping onto the floor as he held his arms outward to abstractly shield them.

"Never..." he hesitated for a brief moment, "Never! If you want to get to them, you'll have to get past me first!"

Tyranitar stepped forward. The trainer's bravery immediately faltered. No matter how much courage and willpower he had, the Tyranitar could shatter it with just a glance of his bloodthirsty eyes. He stared into the trainer's eyes, a deathly grin across his unmarked face. The trainer's heart was pounding; it was as if he were to go insane just by the gaze Tyranitar casted at him. In the deepest recesses of his mind, he felt something scratching at his sanity, a hidden presence that wished to see him suffer.

"If you do not step aside, we will not hesitate to move you ourselves." At the sage's words, the trainer blinked, snapping out of the hypnotic trance the devil before him had held him with.

He shook his head vigorously, trying to return to his senses. "I don't care! I won't abandon my friends!" Sweat ran down the trainer's face as fear flickered in his eyes. Looking down at his pokemon, they were all horribly gnarled and misshapen. Bones must have fractured and split in multiple parts of their body, and yet, their eyes were open. Their chests moved. They were breathing.

Tyranitar stepped closer.

"Move out of the way foolish boy. This is your final chance." The Tyranitar let out an impatient growl deep in his throat.

The trainer's eyes remained on his pokemon. All of his past experiences with each of them flashed through his memory: how he met them, how he raised them, all of the challenges they worked through as a team. Serperior...Musharna...Gigalith...Scrafty...Durant ...Reshiram...

He closed his eyes, leaving an imprinted image of his broken pokemon in his memory. A single tear escaped his eye, sadly flowing down his dirty cheek.

"...no..." he whispered.

"Fool..." The sage turned around. "Tyranitar. Stone Edge."

With a smile only a serial killer could produce, Tyranitar growled, pulling his arms back. The trainer kept his eyes shut, his arms still out. Tyranitar's hands began to glow with dark light as they conjured horrid spikes. The trainer's heart-rate had risen to dangerous speeds as his body was aware of what was happening; however, his mind was not connected with it. In his own pool of memories and experiences, his conscious had severed the rest of the world from his senses; only he and his pokemon were in the prison cell, and he was standing on the edge of a black void.

Physically, he stood between Tyranitar and his pokemon; if he moved out of the way, they would be killed. He never planned on doing such a thing, but he doubted he would be able to even if he wanted to. Every ounce of him wanted to remain there, standing before his pokemon as their trainer, friend, and soul-mate.

Serperior's eyes slowly regained focus as his consciousness returned to him. Although his body was bent and was covered with open wounds, he managed to find the strength to lift his head slightly to see what was happening. Barely able to maintain consciousness, his memory retrieved itself.

_They all charged forward at their foes, prepared for the worst. Serperior's muscles were torn on the inside in multiple spots, but he tried to ignore the pain as he slithered as fast as he could toward Crawdaunt. With his type advantage, he could probably do quite a bit of damage before the others joined in. Ahead of him, Scrafty and Reshiram hobbled toward Bisharp; their logic was similar to his own._

_Crawdaunt stared at him mockingly; his claws down to his sides in a No-Guard pose. From his side, Serperior heard a hostile skittering sound. Durant caught up to him and crawled across the ground by his side, ready to join him in his attack._

_With the most threatening hiss he could muster, Serperior coiled himself slightly, while his leafy tail glimmered a deep green. At the same time, Durant's jaws glowed a pastel green, leaving a twin trail of viridian behind them as they reached the highest speed they could._

_He uncoiled, unleashing the strongest __**Leaf Blade**__ his body would permit, while Durant leapt forward with __X-Scissor__. Crawdaunt smiled deceptively as they neared their target._

_As Serperior's tail came down in a brilliant streak of green, Crawdaunt caught the attack in his claw, gripping his tail so tightly in his vice-like grip that several blood vessels within audibly burst. The pain was unbearable in addition to his already weathered-down state. Before he could scream in agony, Crawdaunt swung his body to the side. Another mind-meltingly painful sensation erupted from the side of his mid-body. Durant's attack slashed into Serperior's side in unavoidable friendly-fire._

_Serperior's vision began to fade as the super-effective attack left a large, open X in his side. Durant landed safely on the ground nearby, making a "Sskssksskssk" sound as she called out to him. His consciousness quickly began to dim, but before he was allowed blissful sleep, Crawdaunt swung his body around once more, this time releasing him. In midair, his senses felt dull in the same sense that he had felt in the past before he fainted in a pokemon battle. The pain felt diluted and a bit more bearable, and yet also more noticeable._

_His eyes barely remained open as he looked toward where he was hurling toward. Bisharp faced him with her arm-blades at the ready. In his pokemon-mind, he thought to himself as he flung toward the awaiting proverbial blender. "Sh…shit…"_

_His consciousness cut out at Bisharp's first slash._

Looking downward, his body was littered with deep, crisscrossing cuts that bled profusely. Strangely, he couldn't feel them, and judging by the fact that he was still alive, his vital arteries weren't severed.

His weak gaze drifted upward toward a familiar shape. His trainer was standing close to him, facing away and with his arms stretched out. What was he doing? Did they not win the battle? His neck was too weak to move in search of his comrades.

In front of his trainer was something strange; it was large, greenish, and more vertical than horizontal. He squinted his amber eyes, trying to focus. Tyranitar's intimidating image came into his vision. What was he doing…?

His arms were behind him and had several conjured spikes on them…

His trainer was standing before Tyranitar in a rather defenseless pose…

Serperior's mind snapped in realization. Disregarding his own injuries, he found enough strength to lift his head up weakly. Behind him were Scrafty, Reshiram, Musharna, Gigalith, and Durant, all of them in the same terrible condition as him. In a panic, his eyes swayed back and forth between them, his trainer, and Tyranitar. The pieces of the puzzle finally locked themselves in place within his mind.

"Serperiooooooooooooor!" he desperately screamed out at his trainer. As he did, Scrafty, Munna, Gigalith, Durant, and Reshiram began to regain consciousness.

The trainer's head stirred slightly. He turned his head and looked back at Serperior. Sorrowful tears were running down Serperior's face in realization of what he was planning to do.

"Ser…" he said in his pokemon language. His voice sounded choked up, almost ill.

"Grhhhhhhhhhhhh…" rumbled Gigalith. Serperior turned toward Gigalith. In his torso were a multitude of deep holes in his body, some of them even so deep as to have gone all the way through. Along his legs were dents and crumbling pieces of his body, damaged from high impact blunt attacks. The far right third of his face was divided from the rest by a large crack that split down the entire width of his head.

"…Mu…..sharna…" Musharna was lying on the ground already facing toward her trainer. The top of her head was misshapen and concave from a heavy blow by Crawdaunt. Very faint sparks of psychic energy pulsed around her. It was clear that the blow to the head made her lose most of her control of her psychic abilities.

Scrafty, Reshiram, and Durant simultaneously awakened, but were unable to vocalize along with the others. A piece of Durant's metal skin was broken upwards into her upper abdomen, pressing against her throat in such a way that barely allowed her to breath, let alone make any sound. Scrafty's body was covered in deep, disturbingly colored bruises. On her chest, however, was a particularly dark bruise where her lung was. Reshiram's sapphire eyes dimly gazed forward without any movement of his head. There was nothing visible in particular that seemed to hinder him, but a shallow pool of dragon's blood was spread beneath his head. His throat was cut.

The entire moment occurred in only a few seconds, but the temporal clock seemed to tick more slowly just for them. In that brief moment of trainer looking to his pokemon, and his pokemon looking back to him, the look in the trainer's brown, exhausted eyes said only one thing.

Goodbye.

Sooner than the trainer would have liked, Tyranitar's attack was readied. A typical Stone Edge attack rakes the target with 6 to 8 jagged rocks, depending on the strength of the pokemon using it. Tyranitar's eyes were wide and bloodshot as he blasted his arms forward, shooting dozens of fist-sized razor-blade rocks directly at his target. The trainer did not see them, as his head was still turned toward his pokemon. His senses simultaneously deadened as the first stone impaled his chest, cracking through his sternum, and exiting out of his back. The air in his sliced lungs pushed out of his body, forcing a "guah!" to escape his mouth. Stone after stone stabbed him one at a time, severing bones and slicing his vital innards wide open. The trainer's life spilled upon the floor and upon his stunned pokemon.

"That's enough, Tyranitar," the sage commanded.

His pokemon were petrified as they watched their master dying before them. Serperior quietly wept in mind-shattering sorrow as he felt his life-friend's blood running down his body. He was his very first pokemon, and now…

"I said that's enough!"

Tyranitar roared in demonic, bellowing laughter as the Stone Edge continued mercilessly.

"DAMMIT, I COMMANDED YOU TO STOP!" the sage exploded. As he did, Bisharp and Crawdaunt dashed forward and grabbed onto Tyranitar, trying to stop him. Despite their struggling, it was as if Tyranitar didn't even notice them at all. His evil eyes were fixated on his mutilated target as he cackled insanely at the death of a living being.

Suddenly, Tyranitar roared in pain, breaking his channeled assault. From behind, the high sage held his black Pokeball out toward him. Tyranitar growled in hostility, turning toward the sage before lunging forward. He squeezed the black Pokeball, sending out a black beam toward Tyranitar. Rather than dematerializing him and bringing him into the capsule, the beam made contact with the center of the gear equipped by Tyranitar, causing a loud, crackling bolt of electricity to arc into him. He roared in pain again, the electric shock bringing him to his knees.

"Never disobey me," the sage demoralized.

The last of the stones had grazed the top of the trainer's head, leaving an open, bloody gash that revealed his skull. Completely broken, he stood, or at least he looked as though he was standing. Without the attack holding his body in place, nothing supported his mangled form. His eyes were wide, dilated, and unfocused, his arms still outstretched. Blood was splattered across the back wall and ran down onto the floor in a sickening, dark mess. A small, final puff of blood-curdled breath escaped from him as he fell to his shattered knees, his final moments of life fading away. In dead silence, he fell face-down onto the cold stone floor with a wet thud.

Not a sound echoed through the prison chamber. Traumatizing horror had stolen the breath of his companions, who watched in devastating shock at the unstoppable terror they had never hoped to see: their trainer dying with no way of helping him. The sages' pokemon stared rather apathetically, although showed signs of fear toward Tyranitar's merciless disposition. The sages within the cell stared, bewildered. Tyranitar brought himself back onto his feet, the blood of the fallen trainer dripping off of his face. He looked back toward the mangled heap that was once a human, and in his own way of displaying his feelings toward the death of a man and the absolute murderous brutality of it all, he smiled.

The high sage looked to Tyranitar for a moment, then back at the trainer's corpse. "The fool could have kept his life if he knew when to quit. We were going to get his pokemon in the en-"

A deafening blast of desperate rage bellowed through the castle as the fallen trainer's pokemon roared out in pain. Burning white fire flared off of Reshiram in brilliant flower-petal-like cinders, igniting the room in a living, pure inferno of incandescence. The entire castle shook as Gigalith stomped the ground in an enraged tantrum, the cracks on his body slowly lengthening. Musharna pulsed with immense psycho-power, distorting the roaring light in the room in a mind-blurring ripple effect. Durant tore extra chunks of steel skin off of her body as her razor of a jaw began to viciously snap. Scrafty had murder in her eyes as she slammed her broken fist into the floor, creating a visible crack. Serperior hissed and coiled tightly with burning hatred in his eyes; his leafy tail erupted with massive thorns.

The feverish display of outrage the pokemon exploded with stunned the sages as well as their pokemon. They had thought the pokemon had reached their limits.

"Tyranitar. Avalanche, now!"

"Bisharp, Night Slash."

"Crawdaunt! Guillotine! Let's go!"

The sages' pokemon were preparing their attacks when the first attack landed: Gigalith unleashed a heavy **Rock Slide**, stopping the Dark types in their tracks with black rocks "borrowed" from the ceiling. Serperior lashed out like a cracking whip and savagely sliced Crawdaunt with a critical **Leaf Blade**, felling the still-flinching pokemon. The Bisharp and Tyranitar came to their senses, prepared to continue their attacks. Suddenly, the Bisharp fell to the floor, asleep. Musharna could not harm them due to their type, but could hold them still with Hypnosis. Scrafty jumped up and held onto the ceiling before pushing off with great force. The Tyranitar lumbered out of the way, but he was not the target. With great force, Scrafty landed a vicious Hi Jump Kick to the Bisharp's skull, effectively removing any fight she had left in her.

Tyranitar's violet eye glimmered darkly. As he took a stance, the air became frigid and rather dense. As he was preparing his attack, Durant charged in at a blinding speed, uninhibited by her heavy steel skin. Tyranitar had no chance of dodging, but that was not the intent. The overzealous Durant moved in with a razor-sharp, bloody X-Scissor. The attack connected across Tyranitar's exposed torso, but it wasn't enough to bring him down. The Durant joined the others around their fallen trainer, overflowing with every negative emotion possible. The air above the six condensed into a large mound of solid snow as Tyranitar unleashed the double-power Avalanche upon all of the trainer's pokemon. The biting snow heavily pummeled them before quickly melting away in the blazing heat.

The pokemon had already been pushed to the point of fainting, but pure emotion at the loss of their trainer drove them, almost suppressing the heavy damage they had taken. The sages were astonished by the pokemon's resilience.

"Tyranitar! Stone Edge!"

Tyranitar could not even begin the attack. Reshiram's anger spiked his immense firepower to its maximum. The roaring fire in the room collected above Reshiram in a massive fireball as he prepared a max power Fusion Flare. Tyranitar and the sages were stunned at what looked to be a miniature sun that condensed before them. Panicking, Kell and Fuzh withdrew their pokemon back into their Pokeballs and bolted for the open door. The high sage called for Tyranitar to retreat as he fled for the door after the two sages, deciding against recalling him back into his black Pokeball.

Reshiram's eyes erupted with azure flames as he unleashed his attack. The Fusion Flare hurled forward at the fleeing sages and Tyranitar slightly faster than they were running. As the ball of fire moved through the stifling air, the heat intensified, transforming the red flames into a bright blue. The sound of it pushing forward mimicked the sound of a massive dragon roaring in anger.

The concentrated fire bomb made contact with the black stone floor in front of the doorway. A massive, directed explosion rocked the entire castle, blasting fire along the ornate walls of the hallways and destroyed everything in its path. Tyranitar's lack of speed caught up to him as the explosion erupted from behind. The blast exploded upon Tyranitar's back, incinerating his armored skin and blasting large chunks of his back away. Tyranitar roared in pain as cerulean fire seared his exposed muscles and spine.

The entire castle rumbled from the magnitude of the attack, and the little stone prison cell could not support itself any longer. As sturdy as the black rocks were, they were not strong enough to support the doorway in such a quake. The supporting metal frames of the doorway broke along its rusted lines, yielding to the massive weight of the stones above.

Reshiram, Durant, Scrafty, Gigalith, Musharna, and Serperior stared through the crumbling passage as it fell apart; their eyes were transfixed upon the fleeing men. As their feelings of loathing, vengeance, and sorrow dimmed to the point of being under their control once more, the only way out of that black prison chamber collapsed.


	4. Chapter 4: A Dark Embrace

4 - A Dark Embrace

Small embers flickered from the corners of the crumbled room. The dust from the fallen black rocks had settled, leaving little to see in the room but the minor flickers of light against the crevices in the walls.

The weary pokemon had absolutely no strength left. They collapsed on the floor around their trainer's corpse, tears welling in their eyes at the sight of his lifeless body. All of their past experiences, all of the good times they had; everything they had done together as a team, as a family: evaporated.

They were heartbroken. Not even looking to each other for comfort would ease the pain. Tears ran down Scrafty's face onto her shed skin. Musharna couldn't project her sadness through her usual psychic pulses, but her weeping was heard. Even Reshiram, who knew the trainer for the shortest amount of time, was weeping.

There was no way out of the room. The heavy black rocks prevented any possible chance of escaping. The pokemon could easily escape had they had their full strength.

Serperior slowly dragged himself over to the trainer's body. With pain surging through his body with every small movement, he slowly coiled around his beloved trainer, propping his lifeless body upright against his own. As he relaxed his ravaged body, memories of how he and his trainer met began to unfurl.

_Professor Juniper had gathered him and two other small pokemon to be gifted to three people whom just became old enough to begin their lives as pokemon trainers. From what the professor had told him, it was customary that a trainer's first pokemon be their most loyal and loving. With a large smile plastered across his face, he eagerly awaited to see who he was going to be paired with. As a little Snivy, he was an imaginative, joyful dreamer __.__He began to create images in his mind of how his adventures would unfold._

"_Yeah! Great job Serperior!" his unknown silhouette of a trainer would yell. "We've done it! We've become the world champions!"_

_As he lay in his comfortable Pokeball, his heart fluttered as he felt the gift box opening. The first person was going to make their choice! Barely able to contain himself, he begun to hold his breath as he felt somebody poking at each Pokeball. Suddenly, he felt his Pokeball being lifted out of the box - he had been chosen first! But by whom?_

_The Pokeball was tossed, and out of his cozy little home, little Snivy emerged in a bright, illuminating flash. He slowly opened his still-adjusting amber eyes. As the little upstairs room came into focus, he saw three people staring at him: a girl with rather stupid-looking fruit-shaped hair, a guy with glasses and a glazed look in his eyes, and a guy with a black hoodie, a white shirt with a shield-like design on it, black hair, and blue jeans. He desperately hoped he was not chosen by the girl - he sensed she was not destined for greatness._

_The kid in the black hoodie knelt down, looking closely at him. Snivy looked up to him with his large, imposing eyes. Is this he the one who had picked him?_

_"Hey there, little guy," he began. The little Snivy looked up at him, curious. "Do you want to be my first pokemon?"_

_Snivy looked into the boy's eyes. Something in his expression felt…right. He smiled and nodded to his new trainer. "Sni."_

_The new trainer smiled back at his new friend, arms extended. Snivy jumped up and the two met in a loving embrace, setting the tone for their friendship throughout their journey._

And now, Serperior will embrace him one final time. Their meeting was so simple, and yet it meant so much to him. He closed his eyes, thinking about his journey with the trainer. The journey to each gym, the friends he met along the way- Musharna, Gigalith, Scrafty, Durant, and Reshiram- each time he had evolved, the tussling with Team Plasma along the way, even the decisive battle with N. Through the best of times to the hellish pains they endured together, he had no regrets.

Musharna began to hover toward them, barely maintaining an inch off the ground. She softly laid on the ground next to Serperior and her trainer, using the last of her remaining reserves of energy. A complete lack of energy left nothing left in her but her thoughts and emotions. Images of the past began to reflect in her mind as her thoughts melted.

_"Block the exits. Make sure it won't escape." The little Munna was afraid for her life. Strange men in grey hoods were surrounding her, constantly yelling something about dream dust. What did they want from her? Only Musharna could produce dream dust, and she wasn't going to evolve any time soon._

_"Did you get any dream dust yet?"_

_"No, the little maggot won't give us any. Give us the dream dust you worthless piece of shit!" The grey hooded man kicked little Munna against the concrete wall. Injured, she cried out for her mother._

_"Muuuuuuunnaaaaa!" she cried out, desperately trying to get the attention of her mother Musharna. The men waited, seeing if anybody would respond to her cries for help. None came._

_"I've had it. You'd better cough up the dream dust right now or else." The man held a black crowbar._

_"Muu?!" She began to panic. Her psychic abilities were far too insignificant to be used in her defense. She had already once tried to attack with __Psywave__, but the attack ended up popping in her face._

_"Leave that Munna alone!"_

_"Mu?" Munna and the two men turned to see a trainer in a black hoodie standing defiantly with a Servine by his side._

_"Who are you, kid?"_

_"That doesn't matter. Just back off of the Munna." His voice was as commanding as it was serious._

_"I don't think you know who you're messing with kid. We are Team Plasma, and I don't think you want to get involved with our affairs."_

_"I know who you are, and you don't scare me. Now back. Off. The. Munna."_

_"Is that a challenge?"_

_"Sure is. Go, Servine!"_

_The man in a grey hood tossed a Pokeball. "Go, Purrloin!"_

Musharna opened her eyes, visually looking at her trainer for the first time since evolving.

_"How is this possible?!" the defeated man in a grey hood blurted in disbelief._

_"You don't care about your pokemon at all. Until you do, you'll never be able to defeat me and Servine!" Servine let out a triumphant cry._

_"We must report back. I'm sure they didn't need the dream dust too much, anyway. Let's get out of here!"_

_The men in grey hoods ran off into the woods behind them. As they did, the trainer in the black hoodie approached her and knelt down. "Are you ok__,__ little one?"_

_"Mu..." She nodded weakly._

_He looked up toward where the men ran off to. "Those Team Plasma brutes...I can't stand them. The way they treat innocent pokemon...it's hypocritical of them."_

_What the trainer said hit her rather hard. Were those men abusing others just as they were abusing her? "Munna. Mu Munna." She hoped he could somehow understand her language._

_"Hmm?"_

_"Munna mu munna munna."_

_The trainer's face brightened. "Do you want to come with me and help me put Team Plasma in their place?"_

_"Munna!"_

_He smiled. "Well then, welcome aboard Munna! I promise we'll defeat their leader and end their dark conquest."_

_"Munna mu!" The trainer lightly tossed a ball at her. She felt herself dematerialize and condense into the small ball. As the ball closed, she found herself comfortably curled up in a pleasant environment. A click sounded, and she felt the trainer pick up the Pokeball__._

_She excitedly imagined how much stronger she would get while fighting by the trainer's side. She knew in her heart that she and the trainer would become powerful enough to end Team Plasma once and for all!_

Tears welled up in Musharna's eyes. She looked at the trainer one final time, feeling as though she had failed. Even so, she was glad she was by her trainer's side in the end. She slowly closed her glassy eyes once more as the dream mist that flowed from her head began to fade.

Gigalith was beginning to collapse under his own weight. Large chunks of his stone body had already crumbled and broken off, leaving him with many open wounds. Had he been a flesh-based creature, he would have bled to death a long time ago. Very slowly, he dragged himself over behind Musharna, his feet not leaving the ground. He fell upon the ground with a loud bang that echoed slightly in the silent room. He looked at his trainer, wondering if he had succeeded in showing his true self around his trainer. Gigalith had always put on a "tough-guy" facade while around his trainer, trying to be tough and unyielding to make himself seem strong, but was he still weak?

_Roggenrola always tried to act tough around others, especially the Boldores. He wanted to prove that he could be as strong as his father, but nobody believed he'd ever be half the Boldore his father was. Every time he tried to show his strength, it was never good enough to impress anybody._

_"Roggen...rola...roggen...rola..." Roggenrola grunted as he dragged a boulder twice his size across the cave floor, trying to make himself stronger._

_Suddenly, he heard a voice in the distance of the cave._

_"...Man...What's with all these Woobat? Ah well. I'll be out of here as soon as I can find the exit..."_

_A trainer! This was his chance to show just how strong he got! Eagerly, he dropped his makeshift workout equipment and waddled over to the nearest hiding spot._

_"I should collect some these rocks. I'm sure I can find some stardust or maybe a king's rock..."_

_Roggenrola positioned himself to intercept the trainer as he passed by. He'd jump out, let out a cry, and..._

_"This rock looks promising."_

_"Roggen?!" The trainer picked him up and put him in a hoodie-makeshift bag full of other rocks._

_"That should be good. Time to head off."_

_He was stunned. Did he really just get mistaken for an ordinary rock? He wasn't an ordinary rock! He was the son of the greatest Boldore ever to live in Wellspring Cave!_

_Suddenly, he felt the hoodie tip, spilling him among other rocks upon a grassy setting, the sunlight shining on him. Trying to find where he was, he noticed he was upside-down. Great...he couldn't move until something knocked him right-side-up._

_"Let's see...rock...rock...blue rock...rock..."_

_The trainer picked up a rock just below Roggenrola, rolling him dizzyingly onto his feet. Coming to his senses, he snapped into focus. "Roggenrola!" He stood proudly in front of the trainer with a challenging stance._

_"Hmm? A pokemon?"_

_"Roggen!" He leapt forward, shooting a __**Rock Blast**__ at the unprepared trainer. The large chunks of rocks made contact with the trainer's left shoulder, smashing his shoulder__-__blade and crushing part of his upper arm._

_"Gwaaaaaaaaah!" the trainer screamed in pain as he fell to the ground. Roggenrola instantly flinched as it saw the damage it did to the stranger. "What in the world was that for?!" he yelled, his eyes wide and intimidating._

_"R-Rogg..." Roggenrola weakly tried to speak, but couldn't shape any form of speech. What had he done? He certainly was tough like his father...but had his father done anything like this?_

_The Pokeballs on the trainer's belt opened, flashing a white light before unveiling Servine and Munna. The moment they saw their trainer in agony, Servine hissed viciously at Roggenrola as Munna tried to tend to the trainer's wound. Roggenrola was still cringing as Servine blasted him to the ground with a __**Leaf Tornado**__. He couldn't get up._

_He looked past Servine to see Munna helping the trainer sit upright, his shoulder misshapen and bleeding. Why did he attack that trainer? What on earth was he trying to prove?_

Gigalith looked at his mangled trainer. The scar he had left upon his trainer's left shoulder had been raked multiple times by Tyranitar. Gigalith had hoped that the injuries he had regretfully given his trainer would be the last his trainer ever had to endure. And now this...

_The bandage fastened perfectly around the trainer's shattered shoulder. Being able to stand now, he assured his pokemon he was fine. Roggenrola was sitting away from them, ashamed that he attacked the trainer, unprovoked. He tried to prove that he was tough, but all he had proven was that he could throw a dishonorable sucker punch._

_The trainer slowly walked over to him. He was expecting to have to pay immediate repentance for his rash actions. What would they do to him? Scold him? Hurt him? ...Kill him? He was terrified._

_The trainer stood in front of him, his Servine glared at Roggenrola from the left and Munna floated to his right. "Do you want to tell me what that was about?" The trainer sounded much less angry than he thought._

_"Roggen...rola..."_

_"Was it because I mistook you for a rock? I'm very sorry about doing that, by the way. I should have made sure I wasn't bothering anybody."_

_Roggenrola was shocked to see that the trainer was apologizing to him. What reason did he have to say he's sorry? He wasn't the one who almost killed someone else._

_"Roggenrola? Roggen rog roggenrola."_

_As if the trainer could understand him, the trainer responded, "No, no. I am sorry that I bothered you. However, do you think this was a bit extreme?"_

_"Rola, roggenrola rola."_

_"You didn't attack me because I picked you up?"_

_"Rola"_

_"Then why?"_

_"...Rola...roggenrola rog roggenrola"_

_"To be strong? You'll never get strong by blindly attacking innocent bystanders." Did he really understand what he was saying? "I'll tell you what. Why don't you come with me, Servine, and Munna?"_

_"Rogg?"_

_"Mhmm. I'll show you what strength really is." He held out his shaking left hand, the hand of his broken arm. Roggenrola looked into the trainer's eyes. His offer was as genuine and honest as his arm was broken and battered. He nodded at the trainer, placing a foot upon his outstretched hand._

_The trainer smiled as he held up a Pokeball. "I promise I won't let you down." He lightly dropped the Pokeball, conking Roggenrola on the head. He felt a strange sensation as his body dematerialized into a red beam, flowing into the Pokeball__._

_To be strong...Roggenrola supposed he didn't know what that meant just yet. Perhaps this trainer really would show him what strength was - maybe he'd even evolve into a Boldore just like his father. Timidly, he accepted his decision as the Pokeball clicked shut._

Gigalith most definitely had become powerful; he had become one of the very few Boldores of the world to evolve for the second time. True strength...He learned exactly what that was over his travels with his trainer. His only regret was that he didn't truly become friends with his trainer. He'd always been aloof, trying to seem like the strong, silent type, but that wasn't who he was. As his eyes blacked out, he made a promise to his trainer. If he and his trainer somehow were to meet again, he would cut the tough facade, letting his trainer know exactly who he was. He would be his friend...

Scrafty pulled herself together and limped over to the group. Arms shaking, Scrafty pulled herself up onto Serperior, who was now unconscious, and sat at the trainer's left side, holding the trainer's hoodie closely to her. She felt the soft fabric gently caressing her face as memories began to emerge in her conscious. Her eyes began to water as her past flashed before her.

_Her friends were having a race to see who could get ahead of the Scrafties first. She was never a fast Scraggy, but she figured she could get a few laughs by flailing around in the sand. The Scrafties were relatively far ahead of the Scraggies, but they were still visible, despite the blowing sandstorm._

_"Scra...Scra...Ggy!" One of the Scraggies yelled, signaling the race to begin. She hiked up her loose skin pants and began to charge forward over the hilly sand dunes toward the leader Scrafties. Two Scraggies had quickly taken the lead, while five of them had tripped after about 3 steps. Giggling to herself, she began to pick up the pace in hopes of catching up to the hasty Scraggies ahead._

_As she began to catch them, the wind became gradually more intense, blowing up more sand into the air between the Scraggies and Scrafties. The stinging, gritty sand raked her unshed skin and eyes, painfully blinding her for a few moments. She slowly tried to open her eyes, but the swirling sands persistently filled the air thickly; even if she were able to open her eyes without getting sand in her eyes, the visibility was diminishing too rapidly for her to see further than her own hands._

_The dust storm continued to build momentum over time. Scraggy began to feel fear as she noticed the other Scraggies had vanished. "Scra-" She tried to cry out to them, but immediately began to choke on the flying sand. Coughing, hacking, and spitting up dirt, she desperately wanted to find someone-anyone- nearby. In the near distance, she saw the silhouette of a Scraggy. It appeared to be choking on sand as she was. The silhouette recovered from coughing and began to run off into the distance, away from her._

_Her eyes widened as her chances of receiving aid had just reduced. Another silhouette appeared before her, another Scraggy. It appeared to be trying to shield itself from the vicious sandstorm, choking all the while. She began to move toward it, hoping to be able to catch it before it ran off. As she began to hobble toward the image, she watched in fear as it hunched over, falling onto its knees. Was it dying? Her eyes widened as she saw the silhouette fall forward onto its face, motionless._

_A wave of fear washed over her as she began to break into a run toward the heap. As she slowly approached it, however, it slowly began to disappear from the bottom up. Her run turned into a panicked hustle, her thoughts swimming in a whirlpool of terror. She finally reached the spot where she saw the image fall, but she stood upon nothing but mildly elevated sand._

_She frantically began digging into the dry, shifting sand, trying to find the fallen Scraggy she saw moments ago. Every time she scooped an armful of sand off of the spot, ten times the amount removed immediately replaced it. She continued trying to dig for what felt like a painful eternity, feeling an unholy wave of hopelessness and helplessness washing over her in the form of gritty sand._

_Tears of hysteria began to well in her eyes as she realized she had to find safety before she shared the young Scraggy's fate. Oh, if the Scrafties were here with her! They always know what's best in a worst-case scenario. She hardly knew how to survive on her own; certainly finding shelter would be the best course of action, but it was impossible to find anything with the heavy sandstorm blowing._

_Suddenly, she heard a voice._

_"Sand, sand, and more sand. It seems that everywhere I travel, there's at least one desert. Does that even make sense?!"_

_It sounded like a human! She tried to pinpoint where she heard his voice coming from, but the howling winds drowned out its direction._

_She pulled her loose skin as high up as she could to try to shield her eyes and ears from the winds and sand. Once she was as secure as she could be, she sat still and listened._

_"PFFTHTHPHTPH! Freakin' sand in my mouth... Ugh it's all crunchy now... How do all these Sandile live out here anyway?"_

_The voice sounded closer._

_"See, you guys are lucky. You get to sit in your comfy little Pokeballs. How__'__s about you let me in there, hmm? I want in!" He laughed._

_Whoever was talking was most certainly walking in her direction. She looked where she assumed the voice came from and saw a humanoid silhouette much larger than the silhouette of the Scraggies. Hope pulsed in her heart as she got to her feet and began to waddle toward the image._

_"You think they'd make a building or something safe around he-hmm?" He stopped._

_Scraggy continued to approach the human, seeing more and more details of him as she drew closer. She saw black hair, a black unzipped zip-up hoodie hiding a white shielded shirt with a blood red stain along the left shoulder, blue jean pants, and the vague look of a face lightly hidden by a pair of goggles. He somewhat reminded her of one of the leader Scrafties._

_"What's this?" he said as he took notice of her._

_"Scra-" She tried to communicate, but the ever choking sands asphyxiated her. As soon as she tried to speak, she doubled over on her knees, harshly coughing and hacking her lungs out._

_As she tried to gasp for clean air, she felt herself being picked up by the trainer. He held her like a small child._

_"What are you doing in the middle of Route 4 with this crazy sandstorm out?"_

_She continued coughing and hacking. Suddenly, she felt something wrapping lightly around her head. The trainer had taken off his hoodie and loosely curled it around her head, creating a pocket of sand__-__less air for her to breathe. She opened her now-shielded eyes to see his goggled face looking at her. She stared up at her anonymous protector with wonder, curious as to who he was._

_"We've got to get you out of here. There's a rest stop about twenty-five minutes back, maybe only ten minutes if we run. Hang on, little buddy." She was astonished as the trainer began to run, holding her in his arms while the sandstorm blasted sand against his bare skin. Who was he? Who was this random, generous trainer?_

_The howling winds blasted sand against them the entire distance as the trainer ran the entire way. Parts of his arms started to visibly bleed with what appeared to be a mix of blood and sand. As they entered the building, the trainer collapsed onto the ground, breathing hard. He gently placed Scraggy onto a small chair, still wrapped in the cozy black hoodie._

_She looked around. There was nobody in the building, but there was a sink, a TV, a fridge, a table with several chairs, a few potted plants, and a sign which read: "Rest house. Make yourself at home, but please stop stealing all of our oranges. Thank you." She looked. There were no oranges._

_The trainer was lying on his back with his arms spread across the floor, breathing hard. He looked at her._

_"Ugh, huh, are, are you, ok?" he said, taking deep breaths._

_She nodded._

_"Huh, good, huuuhhh, that's good..." He closed his eyes, wincing as he caught his breath. He lifted his arms to take off his goggles; they were slightly red with dried blood and sand. "Ugh, I need an orange..."_

_Scraggy pulled the hoodie over her like a blanket as she watched the trainer shifting through the fridge. Never in her life had she encountered another human, and she had no idea that they could be so hospitable and frien-_

_"AY!"_

_Scraggy was mildly shocked at the outburst, and then saw the trainer flailing around the fridge in search for his fruit. She giggled quietly. She didn't know who this guy was, but she liked him._

_"Bleh, there's nothing good in here..."he muttered. She watched him walk over to a cabinet and pull out a first aid kit. She assumed that he was going to wrap his arms, but he began to walk over to her._

_"Are you ok? Were you hurt anywhere?"_

_She lightly shook her head. "Scra..."_

_"Mmk, if you need anything let me know." He walked over to the sink and began to wash his arms off. He seemed to be fine with it, but she could see him wincing mildly. Pink-colored sand poured into the sink with an audible scratchy sound. She still could not grasp the fact that this total stranger had been so kind to her. Perhaps all humans were like this...? If this is really how all humans are, then she wanted to live with them!_

_The door burst open._

_Scraggy shot her attention to the doorway. A man and a woman wearing weird grey hoods stood. How exciting! More humans!_

_"...yeah, but that's what happens when they're not squares... Hey!"_

_"Hmm?" The trainer turned his attention away from his now-bandaged arms and looked at the two new arrivals._

_The woman was the first to speak. "What do you think you're doing in our hideout?"_

_"Hideout? This is a rest home," he bluntly stated._

_"It's our hideout," the man bellowed. "And punks like you aren't meant to see what we've got hidden here." He had an accent as thick as his hostility. Scraggy began to feel fear. These humans seemed to be much different than the kind stranger…_

_"Well, whatever is hidden around here is certainly well placed. I don't see anything but a common rest hut." He spoke with a calm, rather apathetic tone._

_"Regardless," the woman responded, "We have no choice but to make sure you never let anyone know of our hideout..." She pulled out a Great Ball._

_The trainer sighed. "Very well, since you Team Plasma jerks always seem to pick a fight they can't win..."_

_"You little brat!" She tossed her Great Ball at the same time the man pulled out and tossed an Ultra Ball. In blue and yellow flashes, a Purrloin and Klink appeared. Humans and pokemon lived together? Scraggy began to wonder just how out-of-touch with the rest of the world she was._

_"The usual Team Plasma setup I see." The trainer's confidence was evident as he casually tossed two Pokeballs. White light burst from them as a Servine and Boldore materialized._

_Scraggy was greatly interested. Those strange objects seemed to hold pokemon within them until whoever owned the Pokeball tossed it onto the ground. But what next?_

_"Purrloin, __Fury Swipes__!"_

_"Klink, __Thundershock__!"_

_Scraggy watched in awe as both pokemon obeyed their commands. Purrloin charged in with claws ablaze with white light._

_"Purrrrrrr...!" the Purrloin cried as she charged in._

_Klink began to mechanically spin faster and faster as sparks began flying from it, creating a bright yellow light show._

_The kind stranger sighed briefly before speaking in a rather annoyed, monotone voice. "Servine, behind Boldore. Boldore, use __**Rock Blast**__." He sounded automated, as if he had done this a thousand times._

_The __Thundershock__ shot forward and made contact with Boldore, doing virtually no damage. Purrloin lunged forward with her claws out, letting out a vicious hiss._

_"Nyaaaa!" Purrloin slashed at Boldore with both claws five times. After finishing the attack, she moved back next to Klink. Boldore stood in place, unaffected by the weak attacks._

_"Never mind__,__ Boldore. Don't bother attacking." He looked toward the grey hooded people. "Seriously, you guys' pokemon are, like, level 12 or something. You should really consider how strong you are before challenging a random stranger." He looked toward Scraggy. "You should respect your pokemon. They'll get hurt if you keep doing what you're doing."_

_She stared at him in wonder. It became clear to her why the trainer had selflessly gone out of his way to help her. He had a deep, meaningful love for all pokemon, and he hated seeing them in senseless pain. Such deep love for pokemon... She was astonished at the trainer's heart._

_"You guys can keep your 'hideout'. I only needed to stop by for a moment for this little one." He walked over to her and picked her up into his arms._

_"...Fine...I guess you haven't done any damage to anything in here... Just get out of here before we change our mind."_

_The trainer walked out the door with her in his arms. As he walked out, he said under his breath, "...change your mind...it was my decision to leave you moron..."_

_The sandstorm outside had subsided, leaving a pleasant sunny sky above their heads. Around them was more swirling sand with the occasional visible construction site in the distance. Scraggy was relieved and heartbroken at the same time. The sandstorm was gone, and who knew when the next one would come? But she was separated from her pack... She had seen her closest friends perish right before her... What could she do now?_

_Scraggy looked up at the trainer._

_"Good thing the sandstorm's over. Was the worst sandstorm I'd seen in a long time." He looked down at her. "Are you going to be ok?"_

_"Scrag", she assured._

_He gently set her down on her feet. "Do you know your way home from here? You know where your friends are?"_

_She looked away from him, tears welling in her eyes._

_The trainer's expression softened. "Oh..."_

_Scraggy dashed forward and grabbed tightly onto the trainer's leg. There was nowhere for her to go, and she couldn't survive on her own in the desert. Her instincts took over as she clutched his leg tightly like a small child does to their parent when they are frightened._

_He picked her back up, holding her against him. "It's ok...it's ok..."_

_She quietly wept against his shoulder._

_"You were separated from the rest of your pack, weren't you?"_

_She nodded weakly, holding him close__._

_He hugged her tightly. "If you want to, you can come with me, Servine, Munna, and Boldore."_

_She looked up at him, tears rolling down her face. "S...Sc...Scraggy?"_

_He smiled at her. The look in his eyes was sincere and wholehearted, showing his offer was given not out of pity. He truly wanted her to come along with him._

_She energetically nodded her head. "Scraggy!" A great sense of relief and happiness washed over her as she accepted his offer._

_He lightheartedly laughed. "Welcome to the team, Scraggy!" He held her up as a father would hold his child._

Scrafty smiled to herself, tears running down her face. She cuddled up to her fallen trainer, lying up against his shoulder. Closing her eyes, she saw her past with him, repeating over and over. As the pleasant memories echoed through her head, her mind drifted off as she fell unconscious.

Durant bled in the corner, cringing as blood flowed from her self-inflicted wounds she created when she tore off her own flesh. Seeing what was happening, she winced as she softly skittered over to the group, climbing onto Serperior and laying down on the right side of her trainer's corpse.

Slowly, she looked at herself as best as she could. She could barely see her shaky, yet powerful legs twitching before her, blood running off of the tips. She could feel her open wounds pulsing with her weak heartbeat as they continued to bleed. It didn't bother her, though. Her blood had been shed many times in the past when she lived in Victory Road. Letting out a deep breath, she began to reminisce the last day she spent in Victory Road.

_Durants and Heatmors had been natural enemies for as long as anybody could remember. Heatmors preyed upon Durants, sadistically melting their metal skin off of their bodies to weld them to the rocky floor of Victory Road. Durants had virtually no way to defend themselves for hundreds of years, due to the obscene type disadvantage that good old Arceus had "blessed" them with._

_It wasn't until roughly four years before she became leader of her pack did Durants begin to fight back against their predators, turning it into more than just survival. If a Durant defeated a Heatmor in one-on-one combat, they would be welcomed home as a hero. It was incredibly rare for a Durant to defeat even one Heatmor, yet there was one that managed to defeat two._

_Durant watched from atop a cliff as the crowd of other Durants paraded through Victory Road. She gazed upon them as they cheered for the 'legendary' Durant that defeated two Heatmor each in one-on-one combat. They cheered, holding up the victorious warrior above the crowd for all to see._

_She scoffed. That Durant never had the guts to take on a Heatmor, yet he was being treated like a king. She knew he was a middle-class fighter, showing average combat capabilities that weren't enough to take down a grown Heatmor. It must have been dumb luck._

_She was the leader of this colony, yet she was treated like an average Durant, which was to be expected since she typically was average. While her position was granted to her through succession, she still wanted to enjoy the glory that she assumed would come along with it. That wasn't the case._

_She turned her back. Why was it that most Durants work hard for so long, and then another just waltzes along and stumbles upon fame and glory? It drove her insane. To her, one's destiny should not be balanced based upon luck._

_She walked away from her colony, deep in thought. She wanted to show them that she could do better than that Durant without the aid of random chance, that even with the odds stacked heavily against you, you could still achieve if you tried hard enough._

_Her thoughts turned irrational._

_Even if she was to find the weakest Heatmor in Victory Road and ambush it, she was sure the universe would send something her way to stop her from achieving her goal. Anything that she earned would be cheated from her._

_Her eyes gleamed with negative determination._

Durant looked at the chunks of steel skin she had ripped off of her own body. They were spread across the black stone floor, many of them with pieces of soft, bleeding flesh attached. She had given everything she had to avenge her trainer's death, and yet here she was: bleeding, out of time, and no chance of recovering. But was she cheated out of what she tried so hard to achieve?

She looked at her trainer's corpse. Her vision faded as she began to recall her past.

_There it was. The biggest Heatmor she could find._

_The Heatmor was roughly 200 feet downhill from her, sniffing around for a snack. It had to have been at least one and a half times the size of a normal Heatmor, and by the look of the scar across its back, it had tussled with some tough Durants._

_She crouched, concealing herself behind a small patch of grass. If she moved any closer, the Heatmor could sniff her out and ruin her sneak attack._

_She hesitated. She knew it was dangerous, but it was the only way to prove to everyone that she didn't need luck. But who was she trying to convince? The others? Or herself? She shook her head, determined that whatever happened, it would forever prove if she was right or wrong._

_Heatmor sniffed around. Something was nearby; something edible. A berry bush? No, a Durant. Maybe. It might be a Durant. If it was one, it was far away._

_He heard a light skitter._

_"Mor?" He turned around._

_With a violent hissing and "Ssksskssk" sound, Durant rapidly charged head first into Heatmor, landing a momentum-packed __Iron Head__ to his side._

_"Morrrr!" Clearly not expecting to be the prey in the situation, Heatmor flinched at the impact of the attack as he fell to the ground._

_"Skhhhhhhhhh," Durant hissed. She ended her momentum by gliding across the dirt on her feet until she came to a stop. Her eyes were aglow with fierceness as she charged forward for her next attack._

_Heatmor slowly stood up, still in shock from the ambush. Claw on his head, he came to his senses and looked toward Durant. His face was fierce and battle ready as he glared toward her, indicating that she was not just his foe in combat. She was his prey._

_Undeterred by the monster before her, Durant leapt into the air with her jaw wide open, preparing a __Vicegrip__._

_Heatmor stood his ground, looking toward Durant with confidence. As she was just about to be in range, Heatmor aimed his snout at her, erupting a blaze of embers all around. The cinders blasted all around her, searing her insect-steel skin and melting her natural armor._

_Durant winced in agony as she maintained her trajectory. She opened her burning eyes, aiming for the source of the fire. Her powerful jaws snapped together around the base of Heatmor's snout, causing it to sharply bend unnaturally with a muffled grinding as muscles were severed._

_Heatmor began to roar in pain, but the sliced muscles within his snout protested against vocalizing. Small embers puffed out of his snout as he attempted to use __Fire Spin__ again, but the pain was mind-crushing._

_She released her grip and landed on the ground before Heatmor. She was burned, but she still had some fight left in her. He doubled over in pain as she skittered up a small cliff, ready to deliver the final attack._

_Her heart was on fire. This was the moment! The moment she would prove to herself everything she believed! You didn't need luck, and bad luck can be overcome. There was nothing that could stop her now._

_She crouched, ready to spring upon Heatmor and finish him off with a final __Iron Head__. She leapt into the air. Her aim was spot-on. Her head glowed white as she focused as much energy as she could muster into it. She arced down into her attack._

_Then something hit her. "Kch?"_

_She stopped. In midair, she floated for a brief moment as Heatmor stared at her. Suddenly, she felt weightless as she began to glow red. Quickly, she was pulled into the object that was thrown at her. It closed around her, filling her with a sense of panic. What on earth was happening?! Why now?!_

_She struggled as much as she could, but her burn made moving difficult. The strange ball that held her rocked back and forth as she fought as hard as she could to break free. Suddenly, she heard a click._

_"Woooooo! I caught a Durant!"_

_Her eyes widened. She was captured by a trainer._

_"Holy sweet Arceus, that's a huge Heatmor."_

_She couldn't believe it. She had it. She freakin' had it._

_"Maybe I should catch this one too- aw, I'm out of Ultra Balls."_

_What she was going to disprove had just happened to her. The worst case scenario... The occurrence with the lowest possible chance of occurring..._

_"Oh jeez, it's awake."_

_What were the odds? What were the odds of this trainer being there at this point in time?_

_"Oh man, it's mad."_

_Of him actually hitting a moving target on his first try?_

_"I'd better send someone out..."_

_Of all of this stacked together? Was there some outside force that specifically wanted her to fail?_

_"Time to try out the new team member! A quick Full Restore..."_

_Really? This really happened? This really happened to me? Specifically?_

_The trainer threw the Ultra Ball. In a burst of yellow-white, Durant appeared. Her gaze was unfocused, as if she was in disbelief._

_"Go Durant! Use... Durant?"_

_Her mind twisted in a vortex of both disparity and hopelessness. How could this happen?_

_"Heeeeatmooooooorrrrrr!" Heatmor charged in, fire burning off of his claws._

_Why me? Why did something like this happen to me? The odds were astronomically low..._

_"Durant!"_

_Her thoughts were cut off as Heatmor raked her with a fire-packed critical __Slash__. Her thoughts swirled in physical agony and spiritual disparity, slowly fading to black as she fainted._

She never held it against the trainer that he ruined her assault on the toughest Heatmor in Victory Road. He had no real way of knowing what was going on, although the entire incident still kept her depressed for the first few days of being with him.

She closed her eyes. Her capture was the pinnacle of her bad luck, and yet, it was also a doorway to good fortunes. Her short journey with her trainer proved that she wasn't the only soul in this world with a recurring bad luck streak, in fact, the trainer seemed to have more bad luck than she. She questioned how the universe worked its ways, but this was the world she lived in, and she accepted it.

Reshiram, with blood stained white fur, stepped toward the group. Every step he took shot pain through his bones and up to his exhausted mind. As he heavily breathed, his neck churned more dragon's blood from the open wound in his throat. Reshiram hobbled behind the group, he collapsed forward behind them.

He opened his sapphire eyes. To his right was Serperior coiled around the trainer with the others on top. He softly flopped over and rest against Serperior's body. From his angle, he couldn't see much, but the trainer's body was slightly visible to him. He looked intently at him, astonished.

Reshiram and Zekrom were two halves of the same whole, not necessarily meant to fight, but to coexist. After many years, however, it became necessary for the both of them to side with humans over a world-changing dispute that would forever change the way pokemon and humans lived together. They chose opposite sides, each siding with a specific person: a trainer, pure of heart and soul with ideals that would shape the world and end the fighting. Eventually, the two collided into a climactic battle that ended the world-dividing fight.

History repeated itself today. The division of the world wasn't as extreme as the previous, but Team Plasma had the resources to wreak havoc for ages. Zekrom's hero, N, won in the end, and Reshiram accepted that. And yet, strangely, Reshiram felt a much more powerful connection to the new hero he looked after. The trainer's heart, will, and courage were inspiring, and he felt honored to fight by the trainer's side. He felt the trainer was less of a hero to him but more of a friend...

The six pokemon huddled around their fallen trainer in the cold room. The embers from the explosion were beginning to die, bringing the room closer and closer to pitch black. The six broken pokemon, now unconscious, fatally waited by their trainer's side for the inevitable grasp of death. In each of their weakly beating hearts, they felt as though his presence was still with them…


	5. Chapter 5: Lamenting

5 - Lamenting

His eyes slowly opened to hazy darkness. Trying to think, his thoughts melted into a confused, murky puddle. He couldn't tell where, or even who he was or what had happened. Looking around, it was clear that the room was pitch black. Yet, he could see clearly, as if the room was brightly lit. Feeling uneasy and strangely tired, he reached up to rub his eye, but suddenly stopped. The cold, dark room was visible to him, despite the fact that his eyes were closed. Raising his hands, he was astonished to see that they were a transparent pale-blue foggy outline.

His blurred mind tried to think. '(What in the...what's...)' As he attempted to think, he found it difficult to maintain consciousness, or whatever it was that he was experiencing.

'(Where...am I...?)' The more he concentrated on his thoughts, the more his vision and mind faded. '(Am I...)' He paused, desperately trying not to slip out of what he assumed was reality.

'(...Dead?)'

Emotionless, he tried to pinch himself to see if he was dreaming. No pain.

The lack of feeling didn't faze him. It was as if his emotions were as dead as he appeared to be. Was he really dead though?

Rising to his feet, he looked to see what he was, even who he was. It appeared he was a blue three-dimensional outline of a kid, probably between twelve and sixteen years old based on his physique. He wore jeans and a T-shirt with a blurred image printed on the front and back. His feet were hidden by simple Tenni shoes.

He wondered who he was looking at. Looking at his arms, legs, and body, he didn't recognize who he was.

He looked for a door in the brightly black room, but there didn't appear to be one. It was...just a small, inaccessible room... As he leaned forward in an attempt to walk, his footing awkwardly fumbled beneath him, causing him to fall forward. Landing hard on his face, he wasn't surprised that he felt no pain. With great effort, he picked himself off of the ground, being careful not to push too hard and pass out. Once more on his feet, he stared at his feet as he weaved toward the back wall. As he placed his hand upon it, relief washed over him slightly as he made physical contact with the wall.

As he pressed against the wall with increasing force, he was not expecting to phase through the black rock wall. He fell on the other side soundlessly and painlessly, landing on a soft, silky rug. Looking around, he couldn't tell if the building was familiar. Something about it triggered a bit of memory, but he did not know what. All he knew was he didn't like it.

He rose back onto his feet, leaning against the wall as support. As he lumbered down the decorated hallway, he overheard two people talking in a room on the left.

"...yeah it really helped them become squares. So, did you hear about the guy who challenged Lord N?"

His interest was perked. He walked over to the doorway, hiding along the side wall.

"Yeah, that guy was nuts. I heard the sages weren't able to take his pokemon away."

"Really? How did that happen?"

"Well they were ab-"

He backed away. Someone was walking across the hall from him. He wasn't sure if anybody could see him, but he didn't want to take the chance. Who was the guy they were talking about? For some reason, he took great interest in what they were talking about.

As he wandered through the halls, he heard two other voices approaching around a corner. He looked for a place to hide, but could not find one.

A gray hooded man and woman walked straight toward him. He stood still, waiting for their response, but they continued walking. They walked straight past him without hesitating or looking in his direction.

"...yeah that guy was crazy. It was pretty amazing to watch N's Zekrom in action though."

"Really? Dang, I wish I could have seen that! I was stuck on Patrat duty."

"Haha, I know how that goes. I wonder what happened to that guy...I haven't heard anything about him since N beat him."

"Hmm. Well maybe..."

Their voices trailed off as they rounded another corner. They never saw or heard him.

Again with "that guy who fought N". Who was that guy? Who was N? Who was he?

He heard another distant conversation. Then another, and another. More voices gradually rose up around him, as if he would hear everybody in the building echoing into his mind. Their voices all clouded his mind in a whirlpool of inescapable torment. "That guy..." "The guy who defied N..." "Did you hear about that guy...?" Hundreds of voices eerily echoed in his conscience, all of them talking about the same thing.

The voices were maddening. That guy, the guy, the guy, everybody talked about the guy who lost to N. Their voices grew louder and louder, pushing his mind to the point that it felt as if it would burst. He couldn't take it. He wanted to scream, but no sound came out.

With his hands clenched around his ears, he silently screamed as he ran down the darkening hallways until he was running down a peculiar set of hallways. They were completely charred from wall to wall for what seemed like miles. He weaved through corridor after corridor, not noticing the bizarre scene, and all the while he felt as though he was going insane. That guy, the guy, that one guy, who?! Why was he so bothered by this guy who battled N, whoever N was? Who was he? Who was N? Who was that guy? Who?!

He bolted into a collapsed wall and quickly phased through it. As he entered the other side, the voices quickly quieted in his mind, returning his surroundings to a deathly silence. He laid his back against the wall, clutching his chest as he "breathed" hard.

His back not leaving the wall, he slid down off his feet, resting. What on earth did he just hear? So many voices, all talking about how N defeated some guy. He didn't know who N was, but he didn't particularly care. As for his victim, he seemed to have captured the attention of everybody in the building. But how did that pertain to him? Or maybe... maybe the guy WAS him...

Suddenly his mind flashed a vision.

_From a first person point of view, he saw a man with green hair and a cap standing in front of a black leviathan of a pokemon. Around him were white Ionian pillars that stood in decorative water. The pokemon looked very intimidating, and yet the look in her eye didn't spell evil. The man with green hair seemed to have the same message in his stare. Suddenly, a Pokeball was thrown from his point of view. As the Pokeball opened, a bright flash of light erupted, snapping him back into the present._

He came to his senses. What did he just see? Some trainer with a unique pokemon? The images embedded themselves in his mind, becoming what seemed to be memories. He didn't simply replay his vision in his head; he remembered it happening. The more he concentrated on the "memory", the more vivid it became. Was it truly a memory? Did it have something to do with who he was or what happened to him?

He looked around him. Once again, the room was pitch black, yet he could see; this time, he could only see no more than just a few feet in front of him.

Standing back up, he slowly walked forward. After a few steps, he kicked something solid on the floor, knocking it away just enough to keep it in his vision. He knelt before it and held it in his hand. It was a small, sharpened rock.

His sight blackened as another vision erupted in his psyche.

Faster than anybody's eyes could follow, single images rapidly flashed in his eyes. The man with green hair turning away. The man with green hair flying away on the black pokemon. A set of chains. The ornate hallway. Grey hooded people staring at him. A heavy iron door. A small black stone room. Three people standing in a doorway. Three Pokeballs thrown.

A Crawdaunt.

A Bisharp.

A Tyranitar.

The moment the final image flared in his mind, he staggered, dropping the razor-sharp rock onto the cold black floor.

Tyranitar.

The thought of that pokemon stopped him cold. Tyranitar was certainly a fearsome pokemon, but why did the one in his vision cause him so much discomfort? He stared at the small rock in his palm for a moment. There were many more of these stones on the floor, most of them dripping with blood. He felt unnerved.

He slowly paced forward. All across the floor there were more stones and a lot more blood. The sight of all of this made him want to stop, to turn back, but he felt as though he were on a track, unable to turn back or change direction. His feet continued to step forward against his breaking will.

Out of the darkness ahead, something strange faded into view. He saw a green, round object, most of it still hidden by the darkness. His involuntary movement slowed to a death crawl, revealing the object so slowly that it was almost maddening. As he drew closer to it, more memories festered in his mind.

A battle, one sided.

His pokemon were going to be taken from him.

They fought for him. He fought for them.

Who were his pokemon? All he could see were black silhouettes.

He walked forward. The green object was revealed to be more of a serpent.

A chill went down his spine as his memories continued to regenerate.

Out of the darkness, six bloody pokemon and a body were revealed. The pokemon surrounded the corpse, huddling very closely to it. All of their eyes were closed.

The Tyranitar. His last stand. Stone edge.

The final bits of memory ignited his mind. The trainer stared at his mangled body in the grasp of his pokemon. Serperior, Musharna, Durant, Gigalith, Scrafty, Reshiram. It all came back to him now: the fight with N, the sages dragging him away, the standoff in the stone room. The Stone Edge...

The first emotion he felt since awakening took hold of him as he fell to his knees and wept.


	6. Chapter 6: Soulbound

6 - Soulbound

The quiet air hung heavily in the battered prison cell, creating a stale presence that would choke anybody who was confined within. Not a breath was drawn nor was taken within the broken grave, and the lack of sentient life within the soundproof walls created a feeling that the room was its own, dead world. Outside, life continued on blissfully within the forests nestled below the castle, unaware of the death of fellow creatures. The brilliant midday sun drowned the picturesque outdoors in a constant array of golden sunlight. It was a beautiful day for most inhabitants of the region.

A sickly-colored pool of blood spread beneath the pokemon in a dark red mess. Black coarse stones towered behind them, acting less like a support structure for the room and more like a coffin's walls. Beneath the eyes of each pokemon was a stream of dried tears that ran down from their vision to the bottom of their faces. The trainer's body, or rather, HIS body, was only recognizable due to his face being mostly intact. Small, bleeding cuts blemished his face without distorting it, while the top of his head was sliced wide open and hemorrhaged to a shriveled husk. Everything else about him was torn to an incoherent, bloody heap.

The last of his transparent tears fell upon the floor as his sadness was replaced by awareness. He glanced back up at his pokemon, hoping that this was just a horrid nightmare, that he would wake up screaming and disturb his living pokemon from their sleep. He would tell them what he saw, and they would give him their reactions. After talking about it over breakfast, they would be laughing about it, perhaps regaling about some other strange dreams they had. Time continued to burn for several minutes, and he lost hope that this wasn't reality. He felt as though he had taken a brutal blow to the kidney. A little shaken, he stood up to face the aftermath of the contained chaos that occurred in this cell. He tried to speak, but without a voice to be heard, he only mouthed his thoughts.

'(They all...)' His weary mind couldn't focus on anything as his thoughts rapidly cycled. '(How...how did they...)'

He turned around toward the wall that he had charged through. It seemed as though his vision was no longer limited to a few feet. The doorway that the sages had stood in was now a giant pile of immovable black rubble. Both awe and confusion swam through his mind as he pondered what on earth had happened.

'(Did they...? No... There was no way they could have...)' He noticed small traces of ash on the floor and on the small sharp stones. '(Reshiram...)' His gaze revolved back onto Reshiram. The white fur that covered the elegant yin-dragon was almost completely scarlet-brown in a messy pattern. His arm appeared to be unnaturally bent between the elbow and the hand, and his fingers were angled sharply to the sides. Above his busted nose, one of his eyelids appeared to have a deep vertical cut. It was painful just to look at the broken beast. And yet, he was the only creature in the room that could have used a fire attack. So how did he destroy the doorway?

His gaze rested upon all six of his fallen companions. Simply glancing at each of their battered corpses was enough to see the savagery they had endured. So how in the world were they here around their trainer? The sages won...

'(They...)' His mind could not calculate what could have happened. A silent sigh escaped him as he closed his eyes in hopelessness. He felt both alone and depressed, deeply wishing that his pokemon were at least with him spiritually in this strange state of limbo.

He fell back to his knees. With his hands on the ground, his head hung down in despair as deep as a young soul his age could possibly feel. The thought of how he even came to be in this strange state of afterlife didn't occur to him; in his mind, only the desire to have his pokemon alive again persisted.

'(I don't know how they escaped capture, but I wish they could have at least escaped death...)' Tears began to well in his eyes once more as sadness reappeared.

As sadness took over his thoughts, a second emotion began to burn from within him. The heavy feeling of despair within him mixed with the most powerful emotion he would ever feel, one that would never leave him for the rest of his afterlife.

'(…I loved them so much...)'

He closed his transparent eyes in a futile attempt to escape the sight of their dead bodies. Reshiram's mangled face, Durant's mutilated body, Scrafty's misshapen limbs, Gigalith's cracked and shattered legs, Musharna's bloody eyes, Serperior's twisted shape, it was all too much. As he wallowed in sorrow, he strongly wished that he hadn't awakened, that he could have simply died and was left to rot in the ground. But instead, he had to face a reality darker than anything he had ever dreamt of. Was this some type of punishment? Denial of peace?

He opened his tired eyes and looked back to his pokemon, startled to see a change. His pokemon's bodies were still, but they gently gave of a very faint, light blue fog. The fog was the same color as he appeared to be, and it grew denser as it collected around them.

'(What in the world?)' he silently muttered as his eyes widened and focused in upon the odd fog.

The blue fog condensed around all of his pokemon, engulfing them in a clear blue mist. It rolled off of them like dust rolls off of any object in visible spirals of swirling puffs. As it slowly crept toward him, the trainer's soul reached a hand out toward it, almost as if expecting it to consciously move to his hand. The blue smog flowed down onto the floor and spread throughout the cell, eventually expanding past him and surrounding him on all sides. As the strange fog billowed around him, it felt wholesome and comforting, almost inviting him to relax as it enveloped him. In fact, it felt as though the smoke was telling him to surrender, to lie down and let it swallow him up.

He relaxed his weary spiritual body, but his eyes went back to his friends' corpses. Curiously, something seemed to be moving from within the clouds of spiritual smoke. Behind the veil of blue mist were what appeared to be six pairs of short triangles that glowed eerily from where his pokemon's faces were positioned.

The trainer's soul backed up. He felt that he should be afraid, but could not find the emotion. The only emotions he felt seemed to be those of the extreme persuasion, and all other tiers of emotions simply refused to take a hold of him. The conflicting feelings mixed with the blue smoke's malevolent invitations to surrender in such a way that was impossible for the trainer to pinpoint.

The six pairs of bright triangles slowly began to move outward toward the trainer, furthering his dissonance toward the situation. They appeared to be eyes, and they were followed by barely visible clouds of violet. The unidentifiable wisps floated in place, seeming to stare at the befuddled spirit of the trainer.

The cerulean fog fully dissipated from the room, leaving him and the spirits before him as the only moving things within the bright black prison cell. He gazed into their bright eyes, hoping they would react in some way to his presence, but they only hovered in place. Suddenly, they began to contort sporadically and change shape. Their eyes vanished as the strange shadowy blobs began to take familiar shapes. Before long, six pitch black silhouettes replaced them.

His mouth moved, trying to speak aloud. '(Those shapes...they look very familiar...)'

The blackness faded, revealing six pokemon that hovered before each corpse. As he gazed upon them, a strange feeling of nervousness pressed against his chest.

In front of Reshiram, a Chandelure hovered, violet flames burning and eyes closed.

In front of Scrafty, a Gengar levitated, large spikes upon its back and eyes closed.

In front of Gigalith, a Golurk dangled as if held by string from its neck, eyes closed.

In front of Durant, a Froslass floated with frost gently flowing off of her, eyes closed.

In front of Musharna, a pink Jellicent drooped her limp arms, eyes closed.

In front of Serperior, a Dusclops lingered silently, eye closed.

The trainer's soul looked upon them with absolute wonder. Were these the souls of his slain pokemon before him? They were completely different in form as compared to their living selves, and yet…

He quickly compared each soul to its respective decaying body. Each seemed to correlate somehow.

He swiftly rolled onto his feet, eager to interact with the only other souls he had encountered since reawakening. As he opened his mouth to try to speak, he quickly stopped himself. What was he supposed to do? He had no voice to display; his soul could not make a sound by physically interacting with the world around. What could he do other than stare with anticipation? Mental paralysis choked him as he stared at his best friends' true selves.

They floated in place, unresponsive for a few silent moments. Then, silently, their eyes slowly opened in the darkness of the Team Plasma prison cell. Each of their expressions seemed sleepy and heavy, as if they were woken from a long, peaceful slumber.

The trainer's soul swallowed, or at least mimicked the motion. Still unable to act, he waited in agonizing nervousness for his companions' spirits to notice him.

After a few moments of blinking, dazed expressions, and lazy eyes, they finally looked upon him almost simultaneously. As their gazes met eye-to-eye, he could see that their minds were just as muddled and rusted as his was when he had regained consciousness.

They stared at him for a moment, apparently trying to process what they were looking at.

The pokemon and trainer stared at each other for an unnervingly lengthy time that felt endless. He looked at them one at a time straight in the eyes. Their stares began to become more focused and thought-involved.

His mind blanked as he gazed at them. A great pressure crushed where his lungs would have been as he found his forsaken voice. In a near-silent whisper, he called to them.

"Reshiram...Durant...Serperior...Musharna...Gigali th...Scrafty..."

The spirits' eyes widened. In a display of retained memories, the trainer found himself on the ground embraced by his ghost-typed pokemon from every angle. They remembered.

His composure faded quickly as he held them all in his arms as best as he could. Lying on his back, he looked down to see all of them on his sides and on his stomach staring back at him. Their eyes were a milky mix of unbound happiness and blissful tears, the type of gaze that was only created by those who saw their loved one they had believed was dead for years. Never before in the past had he ever seen his pokemon this happy. In fact, it seemed as though they had shed their personalities in that moment just to show their affection. He had never seen Reshiram, Gigalith, or Durant show such emotion. It was breathtaking, so to speak.

The reunited pokemon and trainer tightly embraced on the floor for what felt like a blissful eternity. The closer they were to each other, the more they felt whole, as if it was the only way their existences could have persisted. If the feeling of reunion didn't have to fade, they would have held each other for eternity, ignoring the outside world and the bloodstained stones that surrounded them. As they embraced, a peculiar change began to occur in the trainer. His ghostly image began to become more real and alive. The hazy blue lines that identified his body were replaced by what appeared to be skin and solid clothes. Blue mist persisted around him, but his appearance became close to what he used to be, although he still looked like a blue-skinned ghost. The cuddling pokemon were too engulfed in ecstasy to notice.

"I can't believe it..." he started, trying to find the words to express how he felt. He was never a good orator, and now was no exception. "Is it really you? All of you?"

They all responded simultaneously. "Gengar!" "Slass!" "Jelli!" "Lure!" "Clops!" Golurk gave out a metallic clanking sound that mimicked two thin beams of iron banging against each other within a hollow shell.

Joy overcame him as he smiled. He quickly stood up, trying to get a better look at them. They all appeared to be completely fine; no wounds or scars were found on any of them. In his heart he greatly hoped they would stay that way. His eyes felt tempted to drift over to the corpses behind them, but he fought the urge. He didn't want to spoil the moment in any way.

The reunited group stood together, beaming with positive energy. Through their loyalty, love, and their unbreakable bond, there was absolutely nothing that could separate them-not even death. As the trainer looked into each of his pokemon's eyes, he saw in each of them their past identities. Looking into Dusclops' eye created an image of Serperior in the trainer's vision; looking at Golurk: Gigalith, and so on. He was smiling. Despite his pokemon being completely different physically, he recognized each of them as if they had been ghosts their whole lives.

While they were still overcome with excitement, the moment of their reunion passed, as time does. The six reborn souls of the trainer's pokemon slowly began to become aware of their surroundings. After gazing upon their bloody and broken corpses, they seemed more apathetic than the trainer had anticipated. Perhaps their emotions were suppressed as well.

Before proceeding, something caught the trainer's misty eye. Gengar had something wrapped around her left arm. It appeared to be a blood splattered white hoodie that seemed familiar to the trainer.

"Scra-err, Gengar. Should I call you Gengar or Scrafty?" Gengar shrugged rather nonchalantly. "I'll just call you guys by what you are now. What's that on your arm, Gengar?" he pointed to the wrapping.

"Gar?" She looked at her arm and seemed to be surprised that the hoodie was there. Slowly, she unraveled it from her unbroken purple arm, reassuring the trainer's suspicions. It was a white hoodie covered in dark red blood. "Gengar..." she muttered, bewildered. She seemed to recognize it from past events.

Gengar stared at the hoodie for a long time, then looked at the trainer. Quickly, she hovered to him and handed him the bloody apparel.

"This is the hoodie I was wearing during our journey, wasn't it?" he asked in a slightly saddened tone.

He took a hold of the jacket and was taken aback for a moment. The blood that covered the back and shoulders of the hoodie was not dry. The feeling of the wet blood felt unreasonably disturbing to the trainer, and yet at the same time he felt more compelled to wear it, as if it was a part of him. Reluctantly, and yet also eagerly, he slipped his arms through the hoodie sleeves, dawning the murdered jacket upon his shoulders.

Hoodie on, the pokemon looked at their trainer's soul. His hair was black, his white hoodie displayed blood from his shoulders, his shirt was black with a dark shield on the front decorated by monochromatic gray roses, and his jeans were a deep red. All of him was aglow with an eerie blue energy while his eyes were glowing a warm, pale yellow. His appearance in the bright black stone prison cell within the forsaken castle of Team Plasma embedded him within the living world as a lost soul. His within his pokemon's minds, they wondered if their dark reunion was a blessing or a curse. But regardless of what was to come for the seven wandering spirits, the trainer's pokemon loved him no less.


	7. Chapter 7: Walking Image

7 - Walking Image

"I suppose we should try to get out of here," he said. "This place is depressing." With their backs to their corpses, the trainer and his faithful pokemon began to walk toward the crumbled stone wall. Each step that the trainer and Gengar took made no sound, although Golurk's steps made rather heavy impacts upon the floor, rattling the cell and making bits of dust fall from the cracks in the ceiling. As they drew closer to the makeshift doorway they could walk through, something peculiar caught Dusclops' eye. On his trainer's beltline where he had kept his Pokeballs in the past, there seemed to be something in their place.

"Dusc," he vocalized.

The trainer stopped and turned to Dusclops. "Hmm?"

Dusclops lifted one of his thick, mummified hands and pointed toward the trainer's beltline. He looked down, and, surprisingly enough, there were strange objects attached to his belt loop. They appeared to be Dusk Balls, much like you could purchase at any higher tier Pokemart, but they were clear like glass.

"Where'd these come from…?" the trainer inquired. The mysterious glassy Dusk Balls seemed to be uniform; nothing distinguished one from the other.

Curious, he pulled the first dusk ball off of his belt loop. The only light in the room came from his ghostly visage, but it did not illuminate the room in the least, let alone the strange sphere he held in his hand. From his ghostly eyes, however, he could see the Dusk Ball's details; it was mostly green with jagged purple streaks strewn around it in a basketball-like pattern. It was absolutely clear as well; the stone floor below was unclouded when viewed through the ball.

He casually tossed the ball up and caught it like it was a baseball before looking back up to his pokemon. Their eyes were upon him, but Dusclops seemed fixated specifically upon the Dusk Ball that he held in his hand. It looked almost as if it was calling to him.

The trainer looked back and forth between the ball and Dusclops. "Um, should I try to use this or something…?" He looked at Dusclops, who had stepped forward. "I guess so," the trainer said, unsure. As he pointed the Dusk Ball at Dusclops, he squeezed it as he typically did with the Pokeballs he used in the past to return his pokemon to them. As he did, a sickly green beam fired from the center point of the ball. It was pale and almost disturbing in color, as it seemed to be very close to being the same color that represented grass-typed pokemon. As the beam made contact with Dusclops, the trainer's soul felt a strange, almost stinging sensation in his chest.

"Aaagh!" he flinched, not expecting the strange pain to appear, especially since he had felt no physical pain since reawakening. The beam began to retract, and Dusclops' image dematerialized into the same color as the sick light. As the beam pulled back into the Dusk Ball, the trainer felt as though something was pushing against him, almost trying to make its way inside of him through his chest. He stumbled backwards as the Dusk Ball finished pulling Dusclops within it. The other ghosts moved forward, ready to assist him if he fell.

Barely on his feet, the trainer caught himself before he fell. He felt…different…as if there was a new presence within his mind. Within the recesses of his mind, he felt as though there was another being trying to make space for itself. Rather disturbed, his eyes drifted back down to the Dusk Ball in his hand. Within it, the same color light was present in the center of the glassy sphere. It flickered and pulsed with life, almost as if it was Dusclops himself.

"That was…rather strange…" the trainer said aloud to his pokemon, who seemed to be confused at the strange ordeal.

'(You're telling me,)' a voice echoed in his head.

"What the?!" he blurted out loud, looking around as if the voice had come from above. "Who said that?!" Chandelure, Golurk, Froslass, Jellicent, and Gengar looked around, confused as to who he was yelling at.

'(Wait, did you really hear me?)' the voice intruded once more.

"Yes, I heard you! Who are you?" he rebutted.

'(It's me, Serperior, err, Dusclops!)'

"S…Serperior?" The trainer's eyes were unfocused as his attention turned to his mentality. "Where are you, in my head or something?" Despite the odd situation, he spoke casually, as if nothing strange were occurring.

'(I don't know,)' Dusclops responded. He was not speaking in the same language that humans spoke, but rather in understandable impulses that allowed his trainer to communicate. '(That makes the most sense of anything else that's happened so far.)'

The trainer looked at his other pokemon and pointed to his head as if he was wearing a wireless headset. "Oh my god, you guys, Serperior's in my head." His pokemon looked at him rather questionably. The pose he was making made him look rather stupid.

'(When I was sucked into the Dusk Ball,)' Dusclops continued, '(it felt as if I was being pulled into another entity or something…like I was being connected with you.)'

The trainer's eyes widened. "I felt the same way! Err, rather from the other perspective."

"GENGAR GENGAR GENGAR!" Gengar yelled, holding her head as she shook it over and over. Scrafty always did hate not knowing what was going on.

The trainer looked at her apologetically. "Sorry, Gengar, and everyone else. I suppose this is rather confusing.

'(Maybe you should use the other Dusk Balls, too,)' Dusclops suggested.

"Good idea," he said, placing the Dusk Ball back onto his beltline. He grabbed the second one closest to his front and looked back up. The others were looking at him expectantly, but Jellicent seemed to be just as hypnotized as Dusclops was when he held the other ball. "Your turn, Jellicent."

Jellicent smiled and nodded to him. He took a wider stance, prepared to brace for the impact at hand.

'(Wait, does this mean I have to share my thoughts with the others?)' Dusclops interjected.

"Probably!" the trainer proclaimed as he squeezed the Dusk Ball, sending a very pale beam of pink into Jellicent. The contact sent the same pressure against his chest, but this time he had prepared himself.

'(I guess this means my private thoughts need to be a bit friendlier)' Dusclops said with a rather distasteful tone. Regardless of his negativity, the trainer could feel he was rather ecstatic about the relationship he now had with his trainer and fellow team.

Jellicent's body diffused into the bright pink light as the Dusk Ball pulled her in. As she became fully encapsulated within, the force of the event was still almost enough to knock the trainer off balance. He managed to remain on his feet as he felt Musharna digging into his shared mind. The strange feeling was definitely not the type of experience he felt he could become used to.

Regaining his sense of location, he glanced back at the Dusk Ball, which like the previous Dusk Ball carried the same color light within. The pulsing ball of pink light gave him the feeling of Musharna's presence, while her mind began to become embedded within his own.

'(Yeah, Musharna's always like that isn't she?)' Dusclops randomly thought.

Musharna's presence within his mind became as constant as Serperior's as her conscious connected. '(Whoa, that was- wait, Musharna's always like what?)' Jellicent immediately interrogated.

'(Oh, nothing. We were just talking about you.)' Dusclops' tone was rather taunting.

'(Screw you, Serperior…)' she thought back disdainfully. Dusclops let out a mental snicker.

The trainer smiled at their dispositions, but was even more ecstatic about his newfound connection he would have with his pokemon for who-knows-how-long. With a big grin across his face from blue ear to blue ear, he swapped the Dusk Ball with the third at the belt. "Let's go ahead and get you guys settled, too," he said to them. The others looked at him eagerly.

One at a time, he retracted each of his ghost pokemon into their respective Dusk Balls, and each time he did he felt them enter his conscious. Strangely enough, it was more than simply having them within his thoughts; as he withdrew them one by one, he felt as though they had truly become a part of him, as if their minds and souls were forever bound to his through an unbreakable bond that was formed whenever they were brought into those little glassy Dusk Balls. He had absolutely no way of rationalizing or explaining any of the strange occurrences that had taken place all of this time, but he decided questioning it would bring more harm than rolling with whatever spiritual experiences came his way.

He stared at the flickering lights within the six Dusk Balls, now on his beltline. Dusclops' was green, Jellicent's was pink, Golurk's was a deep brown, Gengar's was orange, Froslass' was white, and Chandelure's was red. All of them danced in a brilliant display of soulful light, signaling just how alive their existences were despite their fatal decay. "Alright you guys are you ready to go?" he inquired aloud.

'(Ready,)' Dusclops assured.

'(Roger,)' Froslass called.

'(Mhmm,)' Golurk bellowed.

'(Ready as I'll ever be,)' Chandelure thought.

'(Yup!)' Gengar added.

'(Let's go,)' Jellicent agreed.

Still wary of their current condition, the trainer reassured himself that they would all learn more of their present state as they experienced living this way for a while, he looked around the room. All of the events that took place up to Tyranitar's Stone Edge were fresh in his visual memory, but nothing more persisted. Whatever else had occurred had systematically destroyed the doorway.

Suddenly, as the trainer had thought of the lack of knowledge he suffered from, new memories began to engrave into his mind: memories he had never had in the past.

_A massive __Fusion Flare __that was conjured by Reshiram had completely obliterated the small doorway in an attempt to exact revenge upon Tyranitar and the sages. Tyranitar's roars of pain were fully audible as the explosion smashed the rocky supports above._

The trainer staggered, almost falling backwards. '(Did I just…learn that…?)' he thought. '(There was no way...)'

He looked back at the dusk balls. The flickering lights reflected off of his glowing pupils, as if his pokemon were visually communicating with him. The hypnotic colors melted his thoughts, filling his mind with visions of the past from the eyes of his own pokemon. The sight of him dying, the enraged assault, and the explosion, all of the details flowed from his pokemon into his mind.

'(How on earth could they have possibly fought back so much?)' he thought to himself. '(There was no possible way for them to fight, let alone do all of this…)'

'(Perhaps you just don't give us enough credit,)' Jellicent sassed. He had forgotten that his thoughts were interlinked with theirs.

'(I guess you could hear all of that, huh?)' he thought back. He could feel them silently nodding mentally. '(Still…I don't understand where all of that power came from…)'

His pokemon remained quiet as he thought for a moment. He turned back toward the embracing corpses that had once been their bodies. Upon closer inspection, it seemed that all of his pokemon's bodies had blood running from their mouths and noses, with the exception of Gigalith who did not have either. Most of their fatal injuries were internal, not external. '(So how did…)' he trailed off.

More borrowed memories relapsed in his vision, this time with physical feeling. During their rampage, his pokemon had been so focused upon avenging their fallen master that they did not notice the immense amount of internal pain that erupted when they attacked. Even slight movements, such as mild walking, caused great pain within their bodies. Their bodies were tearing themselves apart.

With a blank stare, the trainer took a moment to take in the possibility of what happened. His pokemon's outrage was mentally fueled by the loss of their trainer, but physically fueled by the energy their bodies used for vital processes. The energy used for their thinking, for their breathing, for their heartbeats. He knew that they shared a strong love for each other, but...

His dead heart ached. He was sure his pokemon knew what he was thinking, but they didn't respond.

"...Let's go ahead and..." he paused, touched by their devotion. "...and find a way out of here." His soft words were very choked and emotional. Without returning a thought, his pokemon agreed.

He walked up to the crumbled rubble he had flung himself through and placed a hand upon it. Slowly, he walked through the rocks as if nothing was there. As he passed through the solid objects, his vision saw through them, revealing a darkened, ornate hallway ahead of them with several Team Plasma grunts leaning against the wall, conversing. The hallway was dark and burnt, since the lights and decorations had been destroyed in the blast.

He phased fully through the wall to an interesting sight. The grunts were staring at him, horrified at his visage. He only stared back at them; unlike earlier, it was clear that he was now visible to them. Blue smog flowed off of his body while his piercing yellow eyes looked into theirs.

Hysteria overcame them. "AAAAAAAH! IT'S HIM! IT'S HIM!" one of them screamed. "THE GUY WHO WAS KILLED BY TYRANITAR!"

"T-THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" the next yelled out in panic.

"HE'S BACK FOR REVENGE! RUN!" the first grunt screamed as he bolted down the hallway away from the trainer.

The terrified grunts ran off in a panic, knocking over many of the smoldering decorations along the walls and on small metal tables. Still without most of his emotions, the trainer smiled. He was glad that others could see him, but he was more pleased in the fact that he was able to scare the people he hated nearly to death.

'(Well, that was certainly fun!)' Jellicent delightfully beamed.

'(Haha, yeah!)' Gengar jumped in. '(Let's go find some other grunts and sneak up on them going "OoooooOOOooo!")' She giggled.

The trainer enjoyed how his pokemon were still as vibrant as ever, but his smile quickly faded as he remembered what he was looking for. He wanted to find _him_. He wanted to make him _pay_. He didn't know precisely how much time had passed since the tragedy, but he'd locate him no matter what. He bolted forward toward the direction the grunts ran off to, expecting to find them hiding behind others. Rounding corner after corner in the labyrinth castle, he ran into more and more Team Plasma members, each more terrified than the last. He even ran into several higher ranked people, but they were still chased away with their tails between their legs.

After wandering the darkened halls, he finally reached a hallway with working lights. '(Sheesh, Reshiram, try to control yourself next time, hmm?)' he thought. Chandelure beamed with pride as his Dusk Ball flared red.

'(Sorry, I was a bit upset when I saw you get murdered a little,)' Chandelure quipped.

As he stepped into the light, a peculiar change occurred. As the light illuminated his appearance, his image shifted. Instantly and without a transition, his appearance shifted to something that intrigued him.

He appeared normal. His skin and eyes were no longer aglow, his pants turned blue, his shirt white with the old shield and monochromatic roses decorating it, and his hoodie reverted to black: the blood gone. Intrigued by the changes he could see by looking at his hands, he quickly found an intact mirror close by on a wall.

Peering into it, he was astounded. Everything seemed to be how he remembered them being. His jet-black hair loomed over his eyes slightly without blocking his field of vision. His face was relatively average in proportions: not too round and not too pointed. His brown eyes were surrounded by a relatively thick line of black caused from his eyelashes and his natural face shape, leaving a prominent black rim around his gazing eyes. The features of his face were soft and unblemished, which was normal for someone who was around his age, whatever that age was. Judging from his own appearance, he estimated between 14 and 16 years. He was rather scrawny with no real muscles or fat to show, and from the looks of things, he appeared to be at about 5'8" in height.

He placed his hand gently on the mirror. '(My old face…)' he thought. '(It's just like my old self in every way.)'

Curious, he looked to his belt loop. The glassy clear dusk balls now appeared to be ordinary Pokeballs with no light glowing from them.

His pokemon were interested as well. While they, as well as the trainer, could tell that he was still a lost soul, he appeared to be completely alive.

'(Wow,)' he thought to his team, '(are you guys seeing this? I…I look alive…)'

He held his arms out, looking at them as though he had been looking at them for the first time. Positive energy beamed from his Pokemon. Even if the change was simply aesthetic, gazing upon their trainer in his living image made them feel as alive as he appeared to be. He smiled, enjoying this strange event that occurred when he stepped into the light.

'(Is…is it real?)' questioned Froslass. '(Like, do you feel anything different?)' The trainer continued to look at his arms in a mesmerized way.

'(Try to, um, move through an object or something,)' Golurk suggested.

At the suggestion, he gently placed his hand on the mirror and began pushing against it. After a moment of pressure, his solidity gave way and his arm passed through the solid metal and glass. He sighed while still smiling. '(At least I don't look murdered,)' he thought as he withdrew his hand.

The moment over, he rounded the corner and was immediately met by a large group of Team Plasma members standing in fear behind a burly looking executive. They seemed both shocked and confused at the sight of him.

The executive raised a finger toward the trainer. "Is this the boy you were talking about?" he said in a somewhat wretched voice.

"W-what?" one of the grunts stammered in a shaken, timid tone. It was the grunt that had ran away first.

"What happened? L-last time, he was... And blue... And, eyes..." another grunt attempted to add.

The executive sighed. "This is why you're grunts. You're all spineless fools." He looked at the trainer. "Who are you, boy? What are you doing in our castle?"

The trainer looked at the executive hard. After all that had happened, he realized he really didn't know who he was, even after viewing his old self in the mirror. His memories didn't consist of anything pertaining to who he was, only that he was "the guy who challenged N", "the guy who challenged our master", and more recently "the guy who Tyranitar killed." That appeared to be his only identity that he could relate to. The guy...

"I'll ask you one more time. Who are you, kid?"

He let out a short breath and shrugged.

"I'm The Guy," he declared.

"What? What guy?"

"The Guy." he repeated and shrugged carelessly once more.

The executive's face shifted to an expression of annoyance. "That's not a name. Give me your name now before I throw you off this castle."

The trainer took a step forward and presented himself. "I'm The Guy who challenged N, The Guy who defied Team Plasma," he boldly declared. He felt as though he was building a name for himself the more he said those two words.

"What? That's impossible. That guy was taken to a holding chamber, where he refused to give up his pokemon. Our high sage even sent his Tyranitar on him. Poor fool was too stubborn to submit, so they had no choice but…" He chuckled to himself for a moment. "…but to kill him." The last of his words were backed by a sense of undeserved smugness.

The Guy's face hardened. "The sage with the Tyranitar, where is he?"

"Well wouldn't you like to know?" said one of the grunts in the back. They seemed to be gaining confidence that he wasn't a ghost.

"It doesn't matter where he is, what matters now is what to do with you since you refuse to cooperate and tell us who you really are." The executive drew a Pokeball from his waist.

"Just tell me where he is. I have some business to take care of." His tone and expression turned deathly serious.

"Maybe I'll tell you if you defeat me in a battle." He seemed unusually confident, yet that's how most executives are in these organizations.

'(Hey, um, The Guy, is it?)' Golurk echoed, '(Can I, um, punch this guy's teeth in or something?)'

Without breaking eye contact, The Guy placed his hand on Golurk's Pokeball.

"Heh. Prepare yourself for defeat, little boy!" With wide swing, the executive threw his Pokeball into the space between him and The Guy. In a burst of yellow light, a Liepard appeared with a battle ready cry. The executive smugly stood with his arms crossed, acting as though his Liepard was unique despite the thousands of them The Guy ran into.

The Guy tossed his Pokeball. It burst open with a darker light, the type of light that a Dusk Ball usually creates when opened. The black silhouette took shape into a giant humanoid form with stout legs, wide forearms, and a large upper body structure. As the black light faded, Golurk adamantly stood, ready to fight.

The presence of a ghost type pokemon immediately unnerved the grunts after they had seen a specter in their base.

"Pff, a ghost type? Against my dark type? Hah!" the man gave the smuggest look The Guy had ever seen. He wanted to punch him in the face as much as Golurk did.

The Guy began to calculate his moves; his mind seemed far more clairvoyant and focused than when he drew real breath as he seemed to be uninhibited by random thoughts. Now that Golurk was physically away from him, it seemed that their thoughts were no longer intertwined like the others, that they were once again a trainer and his Pokemon. Despite this, The Guy seemed to know his moveset and battle style instinctually after it was figuratively downloaded into his memory.

"Liepard! Agility!" the executive commanded.

"Liiiiiee!" The grunts watched in awe as Liepard began to swiftly zigzag back and forth at an increasing speed; never before had they watched an executive in action. Liepard soon peaked in speed, moving so fast that it was difficult for any living soul in the room to see. Golurk didn't move an inch.

"Now, Liepard. Night Slash!"

Liepard's rapid erratic movements soon turned into a directed assault as he began to bolt straight for Golurk. Liepard's claws began to glow a bright purple, creating a visible trail of neon light.

'(What was the point of using Agility first? Gigalith's already slow as a rock,)' thought Gengar. The Guy watched closely, unimpressed.

"Liiiiiieeeeeeeeee...PAA-"

A wave of shock washed over all of the spectators as well as the confident executive, whose confidence was shattered.

"W...what...it can't be...!" Sweat rolled down his surprised face.

Liepard twitched in both shock and pain as his foreleg was engulfed in Golurk's massive right hand. Golurk only stared at the struggling Liepard, not easing his steel grip.

"Ah...ah...aahhgrrrRRRR" Liepard growled as he swung his body around to attack Golurk with his unbound claw. As his claw neared its target, Golurk tightened his grip on Liepard's leg, making an audible snap.

"PAAAAAAAAAARD!" Liepard screamed in pain as Golurk released his grip, dropping him onto the floor with a hard thud.

"Liepard! No!" the executive dramatically exclaimed.

The Guy only stared at Liepard with disappointment.

"Golurk, that's enough," The Guy commanded.

Golurk didn't move very much, but his stance was relaxed.

The executive ran to his Liepard and stood over him. "Can you fight?"

Liepard looked at him painfully, letting out a weak, negative cry.

"Liepard's had enough," The Guy interjected. "He doesn't deserve to be damaged any further."

The executive shot a look in The Guy's direction. "What?!" he barked through his teeth.

"There's no reason to savagely hurt any of your pokemon. They only follow what you tell them to do." He spoke with an emotionless face.

The executive stared at him in insulted disbelief.

"Now, I will ask you again. Where is the sage with the Tyranitar?"

"GrrrRRRRR YOU SON OF A BITCH!" The less than mannered executive pulled out his only other Pokeball.

Out of the tossed Pokeball emanated a bright white silhouette. The Guy's eyes slightly widened in shock as he saw the shape the light took. The triangular shaped body slowly became resolute, revealing two stumpy legs, two limbless hands, and a swirl-topped head. In a burst of white, the executive's Dusclops stood before Golurk, letting out its cry.

A memory flashed in The Guy's mind.

_"I have recovered the Dusclops you have requested. The trainer was...complicated, but was no trouble."_

The Guy clenched his fists in anger. '(This Dusclops…)' he thought.

Intense anger and rage emanated from his pokemon. They knew exactly which Dusclops this one was based off of The Guy's shared memory.

'(That Dusclops is the same one those bastards stole!)' Froslass yelled in their mind.

'(Those low-life hypocritical thugs!)' thought Gengar. '(They wiped that Dusclops' mind! He doesn't even have his personality anymore! Just look at that lifeless gaze of his!)' One look in the Dusclops' eye showed mechanical servitude, the type of gaze only produced by those who were completely mindless servants.

'(Let us out,)' Chandelure barked, losing his usual cool-headed composure. '(Let us out and let us free him! Let us punish Team Plasma!)' The others cried out in agreement.

With very controlled patience, The Guy responded. '(Calm down, everyone. This isn't the time for that. But I do promise you, we will tear Team Plasma apart.)' His serious tone was both assuring and intimidating to his pokemon.

"Shadow Ball!" The executive yelled, wasting no time.

Dusclops' eye began to glow as he levitated high off the floor. Hands out, a ball of shadows quickly congealed before him. In an instant, the ball shot forward toward Golurk at a high speed. The dancing dark light glimmered in Golurk's oddly-shaped eyes as he watched the attack approach.

Golurk had retained all of his memories from when he was alive when he had awakened. His old Gigalith-style battle tactics and strategies were present along with his newfound train-of-thought. One of the techniques he remembered as a Gigalith was how to take a hit and then return with a devastating blow. His instincts as a Golurk told him to use his foe's energy against them.

The Guy said nothing. Although their minds were now separate, he knew exactly what Golurk had intended to do, despite having no formal orders. Smirking, he nodded with approval toward the ghostly giant.

As the Shadow Ball was about to hit Golurk, he shifted his stance to a more bracing position. He extended his left arm toward the attack, palm wide open and waiting. The Shadow Ball crashed into his open hand, the energy crackling against his fingers. After a brief moment, the ball dispersed into waves of purple energy and electricity as it flowed down Golurk's arm, filling him with its energy.

"What?!" the executive as well as many of the spectating grunts exclaimed.

Golurk clenched his fist, his arm pulsing with shadow energy that crackled like an arcing bolt of lightning.

"**Shadow Punch**," The Guy said at the same time Golurk thought.

He leapt into the air toward the disarmed Dusclops, fist clenched and flowing with power behind him. Halfway to reaching Dusclops, Gigalith reached the peak of his jump and descended out of reach of his target. Looking to the floor, he smashed his fist into the ground, making what seemed like no physical contact with the solid stone flooring. As he did, a charged fist of shadow erupted before Dusclops and smashed into his forehead and eye. The massive force of the impact sent dark purple sparks of shadow energy across the ceiling and walls, interfering with the lights on the ceiling and the candles along the walls.

The executive and his audience were stunned as Dusclops fell to the ground with a loud thud. His eye tightly shut and flowing with dark purple blood, Dusclops didn't move in the least.

"Good aim, Golurk," The Guy complimented. "I see I'm not the only one who thought to do that." He looked down toward Dusclops. "That blow to the head will hopefully reignite his erased memories."

The executive shot a nervous glance at The Guy. He had lost to a child.

The Guy took a short step toward the defeated executive. "Now, I will ask you for the final time." As The Guy spoke, the lights across the ceiling and along the walls began to fail as they flickered rapidly.

The surrounding grunts each thought what they were seeing was a trick of the mind. Each time the lights flickered, the child's appearance seemed to change.

He spoke slowly.

"Where"

One by one, the flickering lights began to black out from the back of the hallway toward the lights directly above them.

"is"

Each candle that lined the walls behind The Guy died one at a time. The dead ceiling lights burst with a loud, glassy crack.

"the"

His voice became louder and more commanding. The last of the candles died out as the final ceiling light burst, leaving the hallway lightless. The executive and the grunts froze in paralyzing fear as the child in front of them had transformed in the dark. His hoodie turned to a ghostly white with disturbingly real blood splatters across it. His jeans turned a dark red. His eyes were aglow with an eerie light. His voice began to echo slightly. Most prominently, his skin had become clear and pale blue.

"SAGE!"

As he yelled out his demand, Chandelure's Dusk Ball flared with bright red light. The dead candles upon the walls ignited with sickly purple fire, the same type of fire that burned from a Chandelure. In unholy fear, the executive and the grunts only looked at the angered spirit before them, terrified for their own lives and souls. Many of the grunts in the back of the crowd turned to run off, leading the rest of them to follow in horrified discord.

As the last of the grunts made it up the staircase and through the doorway, a wall of ice instantly condensed around it, preventing the fleeing executive from proceeding any further. Froslass' Dusk Ball was aglow with an eerie white light.

The executive turned around, his heart and mind racing. With a panicked look in his eye, he breathed heavily as he stared at the dead child that approached him.

"I'm waiting," The Guy said with false patience in his voice.

"_Please, don't kill me_!" the man desperately begged. Hysteria had settled into his mind.

"Just tell me what I want to know." He slowly walked toward the executive, blue fog rolling off of his feet and legs. Gigalith followed closely behind.

"He's upstairs!" the executive cracked. "Two floors up, the last door on the right! Please..."

"That's all I wanted to hear." As The Guy thought to return Golurk to his Dusk Ball, he dematerialized into a beige silhouette and disappeared into the ball.

Running past the cowering executive, The Guy silently glided up the stairs and up to the now-frozen door. Without slowing down, he ran straight through the impassable glacier, leaving the mentally scarred executive trembling in fear at what he just experienced.

The hallway he entered at the top of the stairs was properly lit, and his appearance reverted back to a human the instant his body left the shadows. The hallway was somewhat littered with Team Plasma members of every rank who were questioning the massive group of grunts that had just stampeded by.

The Guy ran down the hallway at full speed, immediately catching their attention.

"Hey! You there! Stop!" the first of them yelled.

"Stop this instant!" the second yelled. Every man and woman he ran by immediately gave chase, but he didn't acknowledge their presence.

'(Two floors up…last door on the right…)' he repeated in his head.

Rounding a corner, he came to a steep set of stairs with an iron door at the top. The top half of the stairs was shadowed by an unlit ceiling.

Team Plasma began to catch up to him when he began to scale the stairs. While just a few meters from the first stair, the man in front of the group reached out to grab the hood of The Guy's jacket. Just before making contact, he crossed into the shadow. Instantly, the man and his following Team Plasma halted. They didn't get more than a second to take in what he turned into before he phased through the thick metal door. They stood, stunned and dumbfounded.

The Guy entered a long, somewhat over-decorated lit hallway. The doors were ornate and fancy compared to the iron doorways found in the rest of the castle. Across the walls were regal designs that patterned the wall in gold and blue. There were no twists or turns in the ornate hall, only a straight path to the end wall with doors all along the sides. There were no people in this hallway.

Immediately, he shifted his gaze to the end of the hallway, focusing on the door on the right. It was open, and the door intruded into the hall.

As he drew nearer, he could feel his pokemon becoming as restless as he was. Images of the soulless sage and his bloodthirsty Tyranitar flashed in his mind. With each step he could feel the air becoming heavier with tension as time seemed to creep by too slowly. He clenched his fists tightly, making an audible crack.

He slid to a stop in front of the doorway and looked into the room with a burning gaze. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.


	8. Chapter 8: Stolen Vengeance

8 - Stolen Vengeance

There was ankle deep water throughout the room. The curtains were soaked, the candles were doused, and only the natural light from the sunset that poured in from the windows provided illumination for the ruined room. An odd smell filled the air; it was a mix of the scents of dirty water and burning material. Some of the fabric on the cushions that padded the chairs had smoldering burns spotted across them.

The Guy slowly gazed in wonder at the strange condition of the room. His pokemon's built up thirst for battle had instantly broken, filling them with a sense of confusion as deep as his.

'(What in the…)' Golurk stuttered.

'(Is…)' Dusclops began, '(…is this the right room?)'

'(I have no idea…)' The Guy thought to them. '(This is the room the executive told us…)' He stepped slowly through the watered room, making soft splashes beneath his feet as he timidly ventured inward. '(I assume this isn't what the room is supposed to look like, though.)'

'(Brilliant deduction,)' Froslass sassed. '(Although I'm sure some people enjoy a soaked room with burnt furniture.)' The Guy grimaced at her negativity.

'(Be that as it may,)' Dusclops continued, '(what the hell happened here? There's water _and_ burns everywhere. I can't make sense of this…)'

The Guy looked around. Dusclops was right. He had seen that the chairs had some burns on them, but after looking around, he noticed that there was more damage than that. The lights above were busted, the two drawers were cracked, and the metal legs of all of the furniture had black smudges around their lengths. It looked as if some kind of fire hurricane had blown through the room.

'(What the hell's a fire hurricane?)' thought Froslass.

'(Hey, don't question my train of thought,)' The Guy thought back. '(I never had to share a mind before so it didn't matter how stupid my thoughts sounded when I-)'

Something caught The Guy's eye. Behind an overturned table, he saw a limb lightly floating in the water.

His expression turned serious. He quickly rushed across the waterlogged floor toward the limb, splashing water across the room with each step. As he pushed the table to the side, what he saw made his dead heart jump.

It was the face-down corpse of a highly-ranked Team Plasma member.

'(GOOD GOD!)' Gengar screamed in his mind.

'(What? NO!)' Jellicent yelled mentally. '(I didn't need to see that!)'

'(He's dead,)' Dusclops thought. '(He's dead and this room is unnaturally damaged. Whatever happened here was no accident.)'

'(Hey, can we take a moment to realize that the man is dead?!)' yelled Gengar. '(Have some respect for the deceased!)'

'(Scrafty, we're all dead,)' Chandelure bluntly thought.

'(Yeah, but… Ohhh…)' It seemed as if Gengar forgot about their present condition.

The Guy smirked slightly before returning his attention to the corpse before him. It had a cloak, which was a clear indication that they were indeed highly ranked, but he couldn't recognize the body based on that alone; the cloak had also been burnt beyond recognition. He reached a trembling hand down toward the corpse; feelings of uneasiness and discomfort filled him. '(We're already dead…there's nothing wrong with handling a dead body at this point…)' he thought publicly to himself. A grimace on his face, he slowly turned the body over onto its back, revealing the face.

It was the sage he was after.

"What!..." he softly whispered. His pokemon were stunned into silence. "Who...who on earth..." He was dumbstruck. As far as he or any of his pokemon knew, they were the only souls in the immediate area who had anything against Team Plasma, and there wasn't another powerful trainer for miles, or at least there wasn't when he had challenged the castle. So who was it? Who did this? Why? This room... The water, the burns… Who killed this sage?

He fell to his knees in disbelief. "…I know our intentions were to exact our revenge upon this man, but…" His words were quiet, but audible. "…It's not like we were going to kill him or anything…"

'(Maybe _you_ weren't,)' thought Dusclops.

The Guy's gaze shifted upward. "What do you mean by that? Isn't this going a bit too far?"

'(Look at yourself, sweetheart,)' Jellicent chimed in. '(Look at all of us. We're the victims of their cruelty, not this guy in the water. The death of the man before us is but one, but he helped in the slaughter of seven. If anybody has gone too far, it's him. It's Team Plasma.)'

"Well, yes, Team Plasma has done many evils that must be brought to justice but, even if we're dead now, that's not enough of a reason to spread death beyond our own."

'(Then consider their crimes beyond your personal level,)' thought Chandelure.

"What do you mean?"

'(The worst of the crimes from your perspective is the death of yourself and of the six of us,)' Chandelure continued. '(However, your perception blacked out when you became the first casualty. Consider the feelings of your friends here, of your beloved pokemon, including me. You're only thinking of those terrible events abstractly. We were right behind you in that god-forsaken prison cell and were made to watch you, our beloved trainer and best friend, be brutally impaled to death!)' The last of his thoughts became saturated in anger.

'(You didn't watch us die before your eyes,)' Froslass added. '(You didn't have that living nightmare forever burned into your memory.)'

The Guy quietly listened to his pokemon, astonished by their intense feelings.

'(I don't even know what we are anymore,)' thought Gengar. '(For all we know, we could simply vanish and be gone forever. I don't want to ever be away from you or my friends here again, and so long as that remains a possibility, I want to make sure that whoever sent us into this state of limbo will pay for hurting us!)'

'(Please,)' Golurk added, '(you're not just The Guy who grew strong enough to challenge Team Plasma. You're not just The Guy who was killed along with his pokemon. You're also The Guy we want to avenge. You're The Guy who brought us together and showed us the world. You're The Guy we all love and care about, and seeing you die first hand was too much for us…)' The Guy was taken aback by Gigalith's comments. He'd never heard Gigalith express himself before.

'(Maybe we are vengeful spirits,)' Dusclops continued, '(but without vengeance, we won't know peace. We must make sure that Team Plasma's efforts are shattered.)'

'(Please, sweetie,)' thought Jellicent, '(consider what we've been through.)'

A moment of silence filled the room and their shared thoughts. His head lowered, The Guy's eyes were shadowed by his dark hair. Motionless, he remained unresponsive for what felt like several minutes. He clenched his fists until they turned white.

He slowly rose to his feet as water ran down his soaked jeans. '(…I'm sorry for being selfish on the matter,)' he thought to them. '(This ordeal must have been far more stressful on you guys than it has on me, and I should have empathized better.)' He looked down toward the corpse of the high sage. '(Team Plasma be damned. Let's be sure that each and every person responsible for this pays with whatever you all see fit.)'

His pokemon simultaneously responded with satisfied assurance.

With a brief sigh, The Guy turned around and slowly began walking nonchalantly back toward the doorway he entered from. '(So what's the plan then?)' he thought to his pokemon. '(Where should we go fir-)'

'(Where are that sage's Pokeballs?)' Dusclops cut him off. He came to a stop and slowly turned around to look at the sage's corpse once more. At the sage's waist there was no usual belt that held the Pokeballs he carried.

"What the…" he muttered as he approached the body once more. After a brief search it became clear that the Pokeballs were nowhere to be found on his person. '(That's so strange…)'

'(This situation is giving me a headache,)' Froslass complained. '(First the room is covered in water and burns, then this guy is apparently dead, and now his Pokeballs are missing? Whatever happened in this room is off my radar.)'

'(I know what you mean,)' The Guy thought back. '(Of all things I had expected to encounter him with his pokemon. Well, I also expected to find him alive, so whatever.)' He rose to his feet once more. '(Still, where are his pokemon…?)'

He shot his head upward, eyes wide with realization.

"Where's Tyranitar?!" he loudly exclaimed.

Horror and discord began to unfurl in his shared mind as he and his pokemon incoherently thought loudly, turning their shared mind into a room of seven panicked voices. Worst case scenarios were thrown around.

'(What if he escaped?!)' Jellicent thought.

'(What if he's alive?!)' from Gengar.

'(He's out there still. That monster is still out there loose!)' from Chandelure.

The Guy held his head as the torrent of thoughts bombarded his mind. He, too, was panicked, but he somehow avoided losing composure.

"Guys, calm down and help me think!" he loudly yelled. It was fortunate that nobody had heard him. At his command, his pokemon slowly settled down to the point where The Guy could once again hear himself think. He quickly found a chair and sat in it. '(Okay, it's possible that Tyranitar is not free…let's just think about it for a second…)'

'(M-maybe you're right,)' Golurk stammered. '(After all, t-the room is like this…maybe whoever did this also got him?)'

'(That could be!)' Chandelure beamed. '(After all, if I remember correctly, he took a direct hit from my final Fusion Flare. Who knows, maybe that ended him?)'

'(I don't know,)' Froslass replied, '(Tyranitar's resistant to fire attacks. He definitely felt it, but I don't think it would be enough to kill him.)'

'(Maybe you're forgetting whose Fusion Flare it was?)' Chandelure boasted.

'(Maybe you're forgetting who lost to Zekrom after two attacks?)' Froslass sassed.

'(Hey, shut your damned mouth!)' yelled Chandelure.

'(You shut yours you over-glorified lighting fixture!)' Froslass exploded.

'(Calm down you two!)' The Guy demanded. '(We have a serious situation here and we can't waste time arguing!)' At his command the two of them settled down disdainfully. '(Now, it's possible that Tyranitar was killed by that attack, but it's also possible that he survived it. Instead of arguing, we have to find out which is true.)'

'(He's right, you know,)' Dusclops added. '(We don't have any time to spare if that demon is conceivably alive.)'

The Guy nodded in agreement before turning toward the doorway once more. As he began to walk toward the exit, something else in the room caught his eye; a metallic glitter shimmered beneath the water.

"Hmm?" He looked toward the glimmering. Multiple colors reflected off of it into his eye; most of them were different shades of blue.

He drudged through the water to get a closer look. It appeared to be a badge in the shape of a shield with an electric P across it.

'(A Team Plasma badge...)' he thought. He studied it closely. On the black and white sides of the shield were multicolored holographic stars, signifying that whoever owned it was a highly ranked member.

'(What about it?)' inquired Dusclops.

He looked toward the sage's corpse. On the inside of the sage's decorative coat was the same badge.

'(He's got the same badge,)' he thought. '(Wait a minute…)' He knelt down to get a closer look. Upon closer examination, the dead sage's badge appeared to have a tiny letter "N" in the lower-left part of the shield. N. There was that name again. '(This badge doesn't have an N on it... Perhaps the letter means the sage worked very closely with N.)' He looked at the forlorn badge in his hand. There was no letter 'N' on it. '(Whoever this badge belongs to was close in rank to this sage, but there must be dozens of people at that rank...)'

He let out a quick breath. "We won't find the answer here," he said aloud. "They're gone by now." As he put the badge into his pocket, he walked out of the doorway without giving the sage's body a second glance.

The Guy walked down the ornate hallway toward the staircase, his hands in his hoodie pockets, his eyes toward the floor. As he walked down the hallway, he entered and left shadow after shadow, shifting his image back and forth.

'(So where are we going to go now?)' thought Gengar. The Guy kept his head down, unsure of what their next move would be.

'(I think the best course of action,)' Jellicent thought, '(would probably be to find some way to see whether Tyranitar is alive or not.)'

'(How are we supposed to do that?)' Gengar replied. '(His Pokeballs were gone and whoever killed him is probably long gone as well…)'

The Guy raised his head to that notion. '(Whoever killed him…)' he thought. '(It's possible that if we find whoever killed that sage knows the whereabouts of his pokemon.)'

'(That's not a bad idea,)' thought Golurk.

'(So long as we find the current status of Tyranitar,)' thought Froslass. '(Did you see all of that equipment he was bound in?)'

'(How could we not,)' thought Jellicent. '(The monster was covered in it. It looked like it was designed to hold him back…)'

A wave of disturbance washed through their shared minds. In mental silence, it was clear that the idea of Tyranitar being alive _and _unbound was enough to make The Guy shiver.

He took a brief gulp of breath. '(Calm down, you guys. I promise, if Tyranitar is still out there somewhere...)'

He stopped in front of the iron door that lead downstairs.

"We will find him."

He phased through the door.

He descended down stairwell after stairwell, deep in thought. Wandering through the broken castle walls, he kept his head down, staring at the floor as he walked. There were very few Team Plasma members in the hallways he crossed, but a small number of them caught a glimpse of him before they hid around a corner like small children, staring in awe and unease at the apparition that passed them by. None of them had the courage to confront him.

He reached the bottom floor of the castle. The pokemon league was visible out of the glassless windows, violently damaged from the force exerted by the castle when it rose from the ground. There didn't appear to be any people actively running the league, leaving it with a feeling of abandonment.

His back to the castle, The Guy walked away from their grave with no intention of ever returning. It was close to dusk, and shadows were splashed across the ground and buildings in random, hypnotic patterns.

He walked out of the entrance to the pokemon league toward the cliffs of victory road, stopping and looking upward at the landscape that spread out before him. Beneath him, the hazardous cliff side caught the sun. A few Durants could be seen skittering between patches of grass, reflecting the sun off of their metal bodies. In the far distance, the brightly lit Opelucid City was glowing a light blue against the orange sky.

He took a deep, drawn out breath. The air was still around him, unaffected by his dead sigh.

His face reflected his inner despair at the situation as he thought about the possible aftermath of their condition. Where were he and his pokemon to go? The living world wasn't made for a wandering spirit like him. People didn't respond well to the idea of spirits, death, and the undead. His pokemon could surely thrive on their own, since ghost pokemon already had homes in this world, but he would have to seclude himself in solitary eternity to avoid disturbing the familiar world of the living.

He felt negative impulses coming from his pokemon. He should know by now that there was no way they would ever leave him after all of the precious moments they'd shared together, especially now. There has never been another trainer who has had this kind of relationship with his pokemon, and they embraced their connection with him.

He smiled. The wind atop the cliff side blew against his hair and hoodie, making them sway and ripple. The low sun brightly bathed him in a golden glow, making him seem more alive than ever. He was brutally murdered, resurrected as an apparition in a living world, and was denied self-vindication through reprisal. And yet, the love he and his pokemon shared made him feel more attached to the world than ever.

He grabbed all six of the Pokeballs off his belt. Turning around, he tossed them all in a spray of six, giving them all room to appear. In six darker colored flashes of light, his pokemon formed. Dusclops, Golurk, Jellicent, Gengar, Froslass, and Chandelure opened their eyes to The Guy, staring at him questionably.

"Alright, you guys," he said to them, "I supposed at the moment we only have two objectives in mind. We have to make sure that Tyranitar is gone for good..." He turned around toward Opelucid City, looking at it hard for a long moment.

"...and we have to find whoever killed the sage."

His pokemon energetically agreed with assuring cries. They had no leads as to where either of their targets were, but they were confident- no, they were completely assured that they would find them, no matter what.

"Opelucid City..." It was the city closest to the castle. If the person who took down the sage ran off, it would probably be the first place they'd flee to.

He held up the abandoned Team Plasma badge, looking at it for a moment before gripping it tightly. '(I don't know who you are or why you did this,)' he thought privately to himself, '(but you may have the answers we seek, and I'll make sure my vengeful pokemon won't kill you.)'

He turned apprehensively to his prepared pokemon. They patiently waited for his decision. "Alright then, let's go." He leapt down the sloped cliff side.

Each of his pokemon simultaneously let out an assuring cry, jumping down after him. The Guy glided downhill upright on his feet, jumping over the small obstacles that came his way. Chandelure quickly caught up to him, three dark streams of fire trailing behind him. He followed closely, periodically revolving around his trainer and leaving a trail of fire.

Jellicent soon followed, her eyes glowing a piercing red. As she hovered around him, her long, thin arms were aglow with a dark violet light.

Froslass quickly caught up from behind. Closely following The Guy, her body emanated a blue fog of frozen air. It trailed behind her, crisscrossing with Chandelure's fire.

Dusclops appeared behind the group, flying swiftly with his arms behind him. The shadowy strands on his head flowed behind him in the wind as he silently hovered next to The Guy.

Not hovering, Gengar tumbled down the hill, doing flips and spins as she acrobatically pushed off the cliff with her feet and hands as she happily cried out "Gen! Gar! Gen! Gar!" She enjoyed the falling.

Golurk thundered from behind, running like a large man runs a downhill marathon as he caught up to The Guy. Keeping pace, each step he took pounded the mountain with a loud bang.

They all rapidly descended down the mountainside, passing by wild pokemon who looked at them in awe and shock. Dust puffed from behind them as his shoes scraped against the hillside.

As they reached the steepest cliff in victory road, he crouched, timing their movement. As soon as his feet reached the end of the edge, he leapt into the air. As his pokemon followed, they lifted off, ignoring gravity as they took to the sky. Behind them, Golurk quickly slammed his foot into the ground, lifting himself into the air with immense force, spraying dust across the cliff. Arms in front of him, Golurk leaned forward and began to fly.

Reaching the peak of his jump, The Guy fell no more than one foot before Golurk zoomed beneath him, catching him onto his back. The Guy sharply turned his attention to the destination ahead: Opelucid City. Gengar, Jellicent, Froslass, Dusclops, and Chandelure closely pursued, their ghostly forms cutting the air as they all left their graveyard behind.


	9. Chapter 9: Seeking Help, Seeking Him

9 - Seeking Help, Seeking Him

With his other five pokemon now concealed within their respective Pokeballs, The Guy and Golurk smoothly landed in front of the Opelucid City pokemon center. Nobody paid any special attention to them since there were plenty of trainers in Opelucid with flying pokemon. In fact, there were a dozen of them in the sky above them on dragon-type pokemon of all shapes and sizes.

He stood by Golurk and took in the environment around him.

"Opelucid City..." he said under his breath as he gazed at the futuristic buildings around him. The bright blue neon walls, the high-tech sidewalks and vending machines, all overdone for the sake of technology. The massive amount of energy consumed was audible if you listened hard enough, thought the people who lived here probably didn't notice. It was the last city he visited before heading toward the pokemon league and Team Plasma's castle. The memories were still fresh in his soul, and they quickly took root in his mind.

He turned and looked down the street left of the pokemon center, fixating his gaze on a building. The roof was a pleasant blue hue with an outline of a Pokeball on the front while the walls were a simple light gray.

"That's the pokemart..." He quickly turned again and looked at another building. It was strikingly similar to many of the other buildings that surrounded it, but a small Axew statue in front of it made it stand out. "There's Iris's house...and..." He looked past the house to see a giant structure with a large Pokeball emblem above its door. It dwarfed all other buildings in the area, for it was as wide as it was tall. "There's the gym."

It was the same as it was before, which was no surprise given the fact that he must have been here no more than two weeks ago. The people who walked along the sidewalks, the positions and functions of each building, the people high above on dragons, it was all vivid in his mind, as if he was here only yesterday.

"Well that's just dandy. I can remember all of this but I can't remember my own name," he bluntly stated. Golurk turned at him for a moment, caught somewhat off-guard by his sudden sarcastic negativity. "Well, it's time to start looking. Maybe while we search the city for whoever it was that killed the sage we'll be able to find somebody who remembers me." He turned his gaze back to Iris's house. "I know Iris left the city at the same time I had, so she's not going to be home for a long time."

Golurk looked toward the gym and made a low-pitched metallic sound from his throat.

He leaned forward to get a better view. "Hmm, I doubt we'll find our perpetrator in there, but do you think the gym leader will remember me?" He looked up at Golurk, who only halfheartedly shrugged. "Eh. Do you want to walk with me or go back in your Pokeball?"

He looked back at The Guy and made two more higher-pitched metallic clanking sounds in his neck.

The Guy smirked slightly. "Alright, let's get going then." '(Are the rest of you guys fine with staying in your Pokeballs?)' he thought.

'(Yeah, you two have fun,)' thought Froslass. '(We might as well stay portable.)' The other four generally agreed.

He motioned for Golurk to follow. The two of them walked down the sidewalk toward the huge building at a normal pace. Several cars and pokemon trainers on the backs of mobile pokemon passed by in the streets, a small handful of them turning and looking at them. Golurk weren't very common in these parts, and if he weren't walking with The Guy, nobody would probably even notice he was there. He was rather fortunate that the city was so brightly lit. If it weren't, he would be walking around as a talking corpse.

'(So what are you going to do when we enter any dark spaces?)' thought Jellicent.

He grimaced slightly. '(I suppose I'll just have to do my best to avoid those areas,)' he thought, '(and if I get caught in a shadow I'll just have to hide or something.)'

'(Maybe you could carry a light bulb or something. Maybe have a large walking stick with a light on the top.)' He smiled at the thought.

At last, they arrived at the gym's doorstep. Up close, the building was far larger than it appeared. The emblem upon the wall featured a Pokeball with a lightning bolt along the side. All of the gyms in the Unova region shared the mark to help travelers distinguish the gyms from other buildings, although its massive size was usually enough of an indicator.

He and Golurk walked up to the large doorway, which seemed to be made to accommodate both people and large pokemon. The glassy doors failed to conceal the complicated dragon-like structures within. As he walked through the entrance, a shadow caught his shoulder, turning the segment of his hoodie white with blue mist surrounding it for just a moment. Nobody noticed.

The inside of the gym was breathtaking and somewhat disheartening if you were to challenge the gym. From the doorway, there was a small square of useable floor that lead to an edge. Attached to the edge was a serpent-like dragon statue that bit down upon the floor, its eyes staring down the entrance. A walkway ran down the snake's back and down its body where it met another snake's tail. The serpents continued to wind and twist around above a seemingly bottomless floor in a mesmerizing maze of dragons until you reached the top, which is where the gym leader waited.

The Guy stared down the bottomless pit, which was concealed by a fine layer of off-white fog. When he was last here, he didn't even realize what an insane hazard this gym was. No guardrails, no tethers, no bungee cables to hold you up, if you fell off you would become nothing more than a giant splatter on the ground below. It was a wonder that the gym wasn't condemned at this point. '(Good thing we're already dead,)' thought Dusclops.

He looked back at Golurk, who looked back at him. He nodded, and Golurk knelt down, allowing him to climb onto his back. As he settled onto Golurk's shoulders, a portly man with glasses ran up to them.

"Hey!" he started. His voice sounded somewhat dopey. "You can't justht fly ov'r to the gym lead'r!"

"Beg your pardon?" The Guy could barely understand him.

"You're not allow'd to justht fly ov'r to the gym lead'r. You haff to go through the obsthtaclesth before you can chsallengthe him!"

He pretended to understand what he said. "No worries, I'm just going to talk to him." He looked forward as Golurk leapt off of the floor, soaring quickly into the air. As they glided straight for the top, the man at the entrance yelled at them, but all he could hear was "sthththshsthsth". The room around them was as enormous as it was amazing. There must have been over three miles of dragon paths that snaked around to all corners of the complex. '(The people who built this place really wanted to give trainers quite the experience,)' he thought.

'(Wow, this place is amazing!)' thought Froslass. She seemed absolutely amazed at the structures, since this was her first time seeing them. Chandelure seemed apathetic toward them in a rawr-I'm-a-legendary-nothing-impresses-me kind of way, but The Guy could feel he was enjoying the sights.

They must have been at least seven stories high in the air before they were eye level with the gym leader's platform. Standing upon the rather small plateau were two battlers: a blonde girl who was using a Zebstrika, and the gym leader, Drayden, who was using a confident looking Druddigon. Behind them, a referee monitored the battle. By the look on the girl's face, she was winning.

Golurk and The Guy landed on the side of the battle as to not interfere. Drayden glanced at them for a moment before refocusing on the battle.

"Druddigon, Chip Away!" The urgency in his voice suggested that he was in a pinch.

"Druuuu!" Druddigon cried out as his claws hardened for the attack. He glided forward at a high speed, his shoulder and his claws behind him.

"Zebstrika, Double Team!" the girl commanded, waving her arm outward to emphasize.

Zebstrika obeyed the command and began to rapidly replicate her image until there were about twenty of her. It was strange, though. The Zebstrika's movements seemed...different than most Zebstrika.

Druddigon continued forward without slowing down and aimed for one of the images.

"Gon!" Druddigon heaved forward and viciously hacked straight past Zebstrika with amazing power. A trail of light dissipated from his claws as Zebstrika's image fizzled away. Wrong choice.

The girl gave a big smirk. "Alright Zebstrika, finish it with Night Daze!"

The Guy's eyes widened in surprise.

"What? No!" Drayden exclaimed. "Druddigon, dodge it!"

Druddigon frantically looked at all of the images of Zebstrika around, but they all moved simultaneously as the attack was prepared. There was no way to tell where it would come from.

All together, the Zebstrika images unleashed a strange, dark mess of energy at Druddigon from every angle. As soon as they all crashed into him, all but one stream of darkness vanished along with the extra copies, leaving one smiling Zebstrika.

"DRUDDii...g-g...gon..." he weakly yelled out as the attack ceased. Druddigon fell to the floor with a soft thud.

A bead of sweat ran down Drayden's face. "Druddigon!"

"Druddigon is unable to battle," the referee proclaimed. "The winner of the Opelucid City gym battle is the challenger, Ashley!" He waved a green flag in her direction.

"Yes! Yes! We did it guys! We did it!" she exclaimed, jumping up and down. Zebstrika's image fizzled away and revealed an ecstatic Zoroark. The two ran to each other and happily embraced, each with a foot in the air.

'(Wow... I had never seen a Zoroark in action before,)' he thought to his pokemon.

'(No kidding,)' thought Gengar. '(I thought that she had somehow cheated to get her Zebstrika to know something like that.)'

Zoroark and Ashley practically cuddled in celebration of their victory. As they jumped up and down in each other's arms, it was clear that Zoroark had taken on some of Ashley's personality. The Guy looked at them in wonder. '(Amazing... They share the same bond as we share... I wonder how long it's been since they met.)'

'(Yeah,)' Froslass thought. '(It's a shame they're not dead yet.)' The guy flinched at Froslass' sarcasm.

'(Don't go all evil-spirit on me, now,)' he thought. He felt Froslass smile kiddingly.

Drayden walked over with a look of disdain on his face. Hands in his pockets, he cleared his throat before speaking.

"Ahem... As the winner of the Opelucid City gym battle, I hereby present you with this badge, yadda yadda yadda." He held up a metallic badge and presented it to her.

Zoroark behind her, the girl stepped forward and nodded. "Thank you. It was a good battle." She lightly bowed her head and smiled at him.

"Uh huh," he reluctantly said as he handed her the badge.

"Yeah, thanks..." She wasn't fond of his attitude. "Let's go Zoroark. The pokemon league is only a few miles away!"

"Zo!" The two of them ran down the exit snake head and bolted out the front door.

Drayden sighed before looking at The Guy. "That's the sixth badge I've given away today."

The Guy was surprised. "The sixth?"

"Yup. Been on a bad losing streak for almost a week now. Won a match earlier today only because the challenger didn't bring any potions. So are you here to claim your free badge as well?"

'(Poor guy, he's lost his fighting spirit,)' he thought.

'(Maybe we should battle him,)' Froslass suggested. '(He seemed like a good battler, he needs to know that.)'

'(Nah, I don't think that would be a good idea,)' he thought. '(Plus we're a bit busy with more important matters.)'

"No, no," he replied with his hands defensively in front of him. "I don't want to make things worse, but I already have your badge." As he finished his sentence, he realized that he no longer had a badge case with him. It must not have reincarnated as he did.

"Lovely," Drayden scoffed. "So what can I do for you?"

"Well, actually, I was here only two weeks ago or so when I battled you. It was a very close match, remember?"

"Sorry, pal. Lots of trainers have been through here recently. Refresh my memory, which one were you?"

The Guy's hope faltered. "I had a Serperior, Munna, Gigalith, and Scrafty. It was down to Gigalith against your Haxorus, and they almost double-KO'd each other, but Gigalith's Sturdy ended up winning me the match." The Golurk behind him raised his hand and curled his other arm in a generic pose of strength.

"Ah, you're the guy with THAT Gigalith," said Drayden.

The guy.

"I don't seem to recall you having a Golurk."

Golurk, still posing, looked at The Guy. A hidden bead of sweat ran down his face. "I, uh, withdrew him from the PC not too long ago," he replied while scratching the back of his head. Golurk's face soured.

"Ah. Well, I remember you now, what was your name again?" Golurk looked at The Guy, who only stared at Drayden.

"You don't remember...?" His voice had a hint of despair in it.

"Sorry, I get so many challengers that I can't keep up with their names."

"It's alright." His pokemon could tell that he was lying. "I just have a quick question. Have you seen anybody from Team Plasma running around the city at all?" As he spoke, his pokemon in their Pokeballs could feel a note of sadness in his heart.

"Hmm... I haven't personally seen any, but several of the security cameras around the city have recognized the Team Plasma insignia on a man's cloak recently, but nobody has confronted him yet."

A cloak. Only very highly ranked members had cloaks...

"I see... Well thank you for the talk. I think I know what I have to do now." He turned toward Golurk and nodded.

"Good luck with that." As Drayden finished his sentence, another trainer ran up the walkway. He sighed. "Hello. Are you here for a gym battle?"

The Guy jumped onto Golurk's back, and the two of them rocketed back toward the exit. The Guy kept his eyes focused forward as they descended back to earth.

'(So he is here…)' he thought. The physical contact he made with Golurk allowed him to hear the thought as well. '(When we were last here, there were no Team Plasma rats in the city. Now there is one...)'

He tightly clenched his fist. '(I have no doubt that he's the one we're after. The only problem now is finding him, but how are we supposed to do that in this huge city?)'


	10. Chapter 10: Direction

10 - Direction

He and Golurk walked out of the glassy double doors of the gym. The sun was hanging low in the sky as the day began to shift into dusk. Bright blue sky was replaced by a warm orange canvas while the clouds were painted mauve. A flock of Altaria and Swablu passed by overhead, squawking and chirping on their way home. All over the region, pokemon and humans began to prepare for a peaceful day's end.

The Guy's face twisted in both doubt and determination. "This city has to be at least fifty miles in diameter. Throw in a thousand buildings or so and we have ourselves a game of needle in a haystack." His pokemon silently listened. "The population of Opelucid is about 500,000, but the man we're looking for should stick out in a crowd." He took a deep breath and loosened up. "Are you guys ready to give it all we got to find this guy?"

All five of his pokemon in their Pokeballs gave a pumped-up cry in his mind, signaling they were prepared. Golurk clanked and raised his fist in the air, ready to do whatever it would take.

The Guy gave a determined smile. "Alright, then let's go!-"

As he was about to run off in a random direction, a nearby electronics shop with TVs displayed in the front window caught his attention.

"Hmm?" He looked at Golurk for a brief moment and signaled him to follow. As they ran up to the displayed TVs, the audio became clearer.

"...everal citi...ns report...eam ...asma in ...city..."

They ran up to the demo televisions and listened closely.

"Police reports also confirm that a member of the notorious Team Plasma has been spotted in the city. Several civilians demanded an arrest be made on the man, but police have decided not to take any action until the man has committed a direct crime. Surveillance tapes caught this image of the suspect."

An image appeared across the screen. The man in the black and white photo had light hair, dark eyes, was of average height, and sported a cloak with the Team Plasma emblem across the back.

The Guy's eyes widened at the sight of the image. "That's..."

His mind flashed back.

_The sage with white hair extended a hand to him as he held Scrafty close to him._

'(The white haired sage?)' he thought.

"Local authorities recommend keeping your children and pokemon protected and under careful watch until the man is no longer considered a possible threat. The man has been spotted most frequently around the Opelucid City Battle House, and anybody living in the immediate area is advised to take additional precautions to minimize the chances of pokemon or child abduction."

"The battle house..." His eyes drifted away from the TV.

"Coming up next, how to make square rice balls."

He turned away from the electronics shop and took a step forward. "The Opelucid City Battle House... I know I've been there before..." As he began to collect his thoughts, Dusclops, Jellicent, and Gengar shared their memories with him. Images of the past began to manifest in his vision.

_Scrafty Hi-Jump Kicking a Dewott._

_Musharna blasting a Watchog with Stored Power._

_Serperior hacking a Darmanitan with Leaf Blade._

He blinked. "That's right, I remember now. We fought, like, seven trainers there to help you guys get experience."

Golurk energetically clanked at him.

"And it was your very first fight since evolving into Gigalith." He smiled at Golurk. "Yeah, I remember now. It was..." He turned and faced toward the sunset. "It was in that general direction, probably a mile or so. It was by...I think by an herb shop... I don't know. I'll know it when I see it."

He looked up at Golurk. "Let's fly."

Golurk held his open hand down onto the ground. The Guy jumped on and was quickly lifted onto Golurk's shoulders. Without hesitation, Golurk leapt off of the ground at great speed, blowing wind across the street.

As they raced toward the sunset, dozens of buildings of all sizes passed rapidly beneath them. The bright blue lights that lined the corners and walls of every building blurred as Golurk approached top speed.

The Guy squinted and tried to recognize the buildings in the distance. 'No...no...pokemart... Wal K... Quizbucks... McBurgerWendy'sQueen... Oh?' He fixated his gaze on a rather run down building with a large wilted leaf posted on its roof.

"The herb shop, there!" He pointed toward it. A clunk from Golurk, and immediately, he and Golurk descended in its direction while avoiding the buildings below.

The streets around the building were devoid of people, leaving the area with a feeling of both abandonment and almost sadness. The streets were filthy and broken, several garbage cans were overflowing and were being poked at by Trubbish, and most of the buildings around had wooden planks where windows should be. All of the buildings had either a "closed forever" sign or a "condemned" sign on the front, all except the herb shop.

Golurk carefully landed on the cracked street in front of the shop, frightening a nearby Trubbish into fleeing. As his feet hit the ground, a section of the street yielded and bent, causing the cracks to widen and snap. The Guy quickly jumped off of Golurk and took a moment to take in his surroundings.

'(Are you sure this is where a battle house would be?)' Froslass inquired. '(It's a rather run-down area, don't you think?)'

'(I would have expected something like a battle house to be in a much more vibrant area,)' thought Chandelure.

"Yeah... I definitely remember seeing this section of the city from the battle house." He walked a few steps, staring at the decrepit building next to the herb shop. It was labeled "condemned", but an extremely faded Pokeball symbol could be seen on the upper wall.

"It's amazing how the people in this city work. They built a sustainable town, and it prospered over time." He looked at another building. "Once they expanded enough, they'd become obsessed with the newer sections of the city and abandon the older parts." He ran his hand down a wall. "It's such a shame..."

Far down the street, he saw a large building. It wasn't brand new, but the paint and lights were enough to show that the building was still in use. Several stories tall, the building read "Battle House of Opelucid City".

"To think that this area of the city is right next to that... It's only a matter of time until it becomes a part of this decay."

Golurk walked up to him. Without looking at him, The Guy spoke. "This is probably where he's hiding. We should ask someone in the battle house if anybody's seen him."

Golurk nodded. Without provocation, the empty Pokeball at The Guy's belt fired a beige beam at Golurk. Rapidly, he deconstructed into light and was pulled into the ball.

With all six of his faithful pokemon within his conscience once more, The Guy began to walk toward the battle house. Despite the crumbling road beneath him, his footsteps were silent and left his path undisturbed. As he walked, his presence in the area was almost iconic: a lost soul walking down an abandoned street. No people, no life, he and his pokemon only had each other now in their broken world. After they handled their unfinished business, where were they to go?

The Opelucid City Battle House. Three floors of overzealous trainers wanting to battle anybody who came in; more importantly, however, there was two more floors above that were for security and monitoring. Surely with all the giant windows along the walls there must be somebody inside who could have recognized the Team Plasma insignia on a regal cloak.

He stopped in front of the front doorway. Hesitation caught a hold of him as doubt swam through his mind. What if nobody has seen him? What if he was putting too much hope into this?

He shook his head. '(No, this is only the second place I've checked so far. Even if they hadn't seen him, I still have the rest of the city to survey.)'

He grabbed onto the door handle and clicked the latch, taking in a long, deep breath. Eyes closed, he was just about to open the right door when the left burst open, making him jump almost high enough to hit the wall above.

"Yeah? Well maybe next time when you spam Protect, it will actually fail for once instead of working three times in a row!"

"It's just the luck of the draw, man."

"Pff, whatever."

"It's my technique, just like how yours..."

The Guy watched the two trainers walk away around the corner of the building as their voices trailed off in the distance. He relaxed, still shocked at the sudden opening door.

'(I didn't know you could jump eight feet in the air,)' taunted Golurk.

'(Yeah, you should set a world record or something,)' poked Froslass. The six of them laughed at their trainer's expense.

"Oh, shut up you guys, I was having a moment," he said aloud.

'(Suuure you were,)' Chandelure mocked.

'(Why do you need me to fly you around,)' Golurk continued. '(You could always leap across the city.)' More laughter.

"I was thinking about what we, and the door, and- you know what, screw you guys." He grabbed the door handle and yanked it open. His pokemon were still giddy.

A little irritated, The Guy looked around the bottom floor lobby of the battle house, trying to pretend that he didn't get startled. Dozens of trainers were scattered across the room, some sitting on sofas, others in chairs, and some watched the news on the HD TVs. They all chitchatted about this and that in a buzz of vocal noise. An elevator was at the back wall across from the front entrance with an attendant standing diligently at its side for anybody who needed assistance. Close by, a help desk was on the left with a friendly looking woman who was patiently waiting for anybody who needed direction.

He walked up to the help desk. The smiling lady looked at him. "Hi! Welcome to the Battle House of Opelucid City. Can I help you with anything?"

"Yeah, hi," he began, "I just had a quick question." He rested his arm on the counter.

"Of course, what would you like to know?" The lady pulled out a sheet of paper that appeared to have a map of the battle house with everything highlighted.

He leaned in closer. "I don't suppose you've seen anybody running around these parts with a cloak on, have you? A cloak with the Team Plasma symbol on the back?"

The lady's smile faded. "Oh, no, I haven't, sorry. I don't normally walk around these parts, and this is my first day on the job."

'(Clearly,)' Gengar thought.

"Oh, well do you know anybody around here who might have seen him?" The Guy continued. "Perhaps security or something?"

"Sure!" She pulled out the map again. "If you take the elevator to..." Her eyes fumbled around the paper. "To the...third? No..." She turned the paper upside down. "The... I think secur- no..."

"Uh, that's ok, I'll just ask around..."

"Ok, sorry about that." She gave a nervous smile. She clearly was the type of new worker who thought they would be quickly fired. "Enjoy the Battle House!"

"Thank you." He smiled and waved at her as he walked toward the elevator. Looking around, it was pretty clear that people on the ground floor weren't interested in battling, but used the area as a hangout spot. Laughter and loud voices echoed from every corner, making The Guy doubt that anybody on this level would give him the answer he seeks. '(Maybe people on other floors won't be so rowdy,)' he thought. '(I'd ask everyone here, but I doubt they'd hear me.)'

He walked up to the attendant next to the elevator who immediately acknowledged his presence. "Hello, which floor would you like to go to?"

"I need to go to whichever floor your security room is on," said The Guy. "Which floor is that?"

The attendant saw the Pokeballs at his waist. "Oh, but wouldn't you like to battle first? We're having a special right now where you earn double points per battle."

"No thanks, I'm in a bit of a hurry." He put his hands into his hoodie pockets.

"Surely you can fit in one battle. Even if you lose, you earn points."

He began to get irritated by the attendant's persistence. "No, please, I need to speak to your security people."

"I can send you to their floor, but how about you visit the battle floor first?"

"NO."

"Are you sure?"

"YES, for god's sake!"

"Very well then, step into the elevator and I'll send you up." He pressed a button behind him and the elevator doors opened.

"Thank you," he said through his teeth, giving the apathetic attendant a glare. He stepped into the elevator and the doors closed. Looking around, there were no buttons on the inside of the elevator, just handrails and floral wallpaper. The attendants had to personally send you. Suddenly, a beep sounded from the speaker above and the elevator began to ascend. He looked up at the LED number above the door. It beeped and changed to a two. Once more, and it was a three.

The elevator came to a bumpy stop. The Guy sighed. He knew that it would be easy to gather information, but he didn't know it would be annoying. '(Next time just let me Will-o-Wisp that attendant's face,)' Dusclops hissed.

The doors opened. Immediately, he was greeted by another attendant. With a big smile on her face, the attendant spoke with a loud voice. "Hello! And welcome to the battle floor!"

"Battle floor?" His eyes widened while he clenched his teeth together.

"Please follow me and I'll set you up for your first match."

"God dammit, I wanted to go to the security floor! Why am I... Oh that son of a..."

She grabbed his arm. "This way please!" She pulled him toward a battle ring.

"I don't have time for this, let me go!"

She pulled him onto a small circle on the floor. A click sounded, and the platform descended down a thin tube.

"Ugh..." He put his palm to his face. He had forgotten that last time he was here they were talking about going bankrupt. '(This must be their irritating way of staying in business,)' he thought.

The platform stopped at the bottom. There was no light, and his ghostly visage took effect for the short time. Light poured in as the doors ahead slid open, revealing a battle arena. The ground was landscaped with dirt and rocks with a Pokeball symbol painted down the middle. Ahead, another trainer stepped out of his doorway.

The Guy walked out of his tube. Immediately, a small crowd of people above in the stands let out a small cheer. Someone in the crowd yelled out, "Finally, a challenger. Let's get it on!" Did people really wait down here for a random trainer to show up?

'(This place is weird...)' thought Froslass.

'(You don't know the half of it,)' Dusclops replied.

The trainer on the other side stood close to the center mark near a referee. He was a burly looking hiker with a pocketed jacket and a beige hat. Confidence glimmered in his eye as he pointed at The Guy. "This little kid is my challenger? Ha! Bring it on, kid! You'll never break my rugged mountain pokemon!"

The Guy sighed. "Well, seeing how I have no choice in the matter, I guess I'll battle. Although, I think you should tone down the boasting just a bit..."

"Why? Are you scared? Start the match ref!"

The referee held up a red flag in The Guy's direction and a green flag in the hiker's direction. "The battle between the challenger and Hiker Thompson will begin shortly. Each of you is allowed to use all pokemon with you, items are allowed, and you can withdraw your pokemon at any time." The referee looked at each of them. "Let the battle commence!"

"Go, Excadrill!" the hiker exclaimed as he tossed a Great Ball out onto the field. It burst open in blue light, and a fierce Excadrill appeared.

"Drill!" he roared, proudly displaying the drill-like appendages on his arms.

The Guy closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why couldn't I just talk to security..." He looked up at the Excadrill. "Fine. If you REALLY want a battle, then I'll make it quick and clean." He pulled out the sixth Pokeball on his belt. "Come on out, Chandelure."

He tossed the Pokeball casually into the center of his half of the field. Dark light flared as the Pokeball opened. From the black light, a pair of yellow eyes glared for a moment before Chandelure materialized.

"Hah, is that your choice?" The hiker boasted while smiling. "Excadrill, Drill Run!"

"Exca!" Excadrill charged forward toward Chandelure with increasing speed. Once fast enough, he dove forward, raising his arms above his head. The metal claws met the steel on his head, and they clicked together, forming a giant spiked drill. He spun at high speeds toward Chandelure, gliding across the ground like a torpedo.

The Guy rolled his eyes. "Left, then Fire Blast."

Chandelure floated in place as Excadrill approached. Just before reaching his target, Excadrill bounced off of the ground and became airborne, his claws aimed at Chandelure's face. A spark glimmered in Chandelure's eye. As the Drill Run was about to make impact, Chandelure blurred to the left in a trail of ghostly fog and fire.

The hiker's expression became tense. "Excadrill, turn around and try again!"

Before the hiker could finish his command, Chandelure's fire had already begun to shape itself. Vertically, the fire rotated above Chandelure in a circle of sickly purple-pink flames. Excadrill continued drilling and tried to turn around in time, but it was too late. Chandelure let out a pulse of distorting energy, firing the fiery wreath toward Excadrill. The force and speed of the attack boomed in the room, creating a savage dragon-like roar as it rocketed toward its target at a blinding speed.

Excadrill had no time to react to the attack as it homed in on him like a bullet. The condensed wreath of fire crashed into him, exploding outward in five directed flamethrowers. Smoke erupted from the impact, clouding the entire arena with a haze of bluish-brown.

The hiker shielded is face with his arm. "Excadrill!"

The Guy watched, intrigued. '(Interesting,)' he thought. '(It's as if Chandelure is even more powerful now that he was before our deaths. If I were to rank him now based on levels, I'd say he was level 70 now.)'

Chandelure watched the fruits of his attack with pride. Smoke billowed around him as the energy died down.

'(Hmm. Makes me wonder if the same could be said for all of you guys. I'd say based on earlier that you, Golurk, must be about level 68 now.)'

'(Yeah, that sounds about right,)' Golurk thought. '(You sure I'm 68 now, though? Maybe I'm not THAT strong…)'How modest.

'(Ooh, ooh, let me go next!)' Gengar excitedly begged. '(I want to know how strong I am now!)'

The Guy smiled. '(Don't worry, Gengar, you'll get your turn.)' She pulsed with delight.

The smoke slowly cleared. The hiker nervously ran toward where Excadrill was before the explosion. "Excadrill!"

Excadrill's image came into focus. He was lying on the floor in a burnt, bleeding husk. He had clearly fainted.

The referee pointed at Excadrill with the green flag. "Excadrill is unable to battle." He turned toward The Guy and held up the red flag. "The winner of the round goes to the challenger!" The crowd above cheered and whooped at the match unfolding before them.

Chandelure slowly floated back to The Guy, his flames bright with excitement. He clearly noticed his own power.

The Guy smiled at him. "Very nice shot buddy, but..." He looked toward the hiker, who returned Excadrill to his Pokeball. "Maybe next time you should tone it down a notch." Chandelure smugly crossed his flames in defiance.

He looked back toward the hiker, who eyed him back. "Let's give the others a try, hmm?" Chandelure nodded and quickly returned to his Pokeball in a beam of dark red.

"That was just a lucky shot... You won't luck out this time!" He tossed his second Great Ball. Another burst of blue, and a Rhyperior appeared.

"Rhyyyyyyy!" he roared, raising his arms up fiercely. In a way, he looked just like Excadrill.

The Guy smiled. '(Hey, Jellicent, want to have some fun with this one?)'

Jellicent snickered deviously in her mind. '(I know exactly what you're getting at,)' she wickedly thought. '(I can only assume you know what moves I have and what I plan to do then…)'

'(I sure do,)' he thought. "Now come on out!" He tossed the second Pokeball from his belt center stage. Black light surged upward, and Jellicent appeared.

"You think a type advantage will help you win?" Hiker Thompson overconfidently taunted. "Rhyperior, Stone Edge!"

The Guy smiled. "Who said anything about using a type advantage?" He intended to toy around with his forced-to-be opponent. "Go ahead Jellicent, make yourself pretty. Attract."

Jellicent's eyes glowed red for a moment. Elegantly, she twirled and fluttered upward as Rhyperior began to charge his attack. She whirled around and winked at Rhyperior seductively with her tentacle arm hiding most of her face.

"Rhyyyyyyyyyyy... Ruh?" He looked up at Jellicent. His eyes widened at the sight of her before turning into two puffy pink hearts. "Rhyyyy!"

"Rhyperior, no!" yelled Hiker Thompson. "Don't fall for it! It's just a trick!"

Rhyperior clumsily stamped back and forth while staring at Jellicent, his tongue hanging from his mouth. "Rhy, rhy, rhy, rhy, rhy!"

"Damn it Rhyperior! Stone Edge!"

"Oh Jellicent?" The Guy called out from the other side of the stage.

Jellicent nodded, and her expression shifted back to serious. She backed away from Rhyperior for a moment, her arms around her mouth. Quickly, she flared her arms out and spat a dark purple Toxic at Rhyperior.

Rhyperior only danced back and forth at Jellicent while chanting "Rhy, rhy, rhy, rhy!" over and over. The putrid sludge landed on his face and arms, immediately afflicting him with the powerful poison.

"I said Stone Edge!" the hiker desperately yelled.

"Rhy, rhy, rhy, rhyyyyyyyy!" The holes on the palms of Rhyperior's hands began to glow. Still infatuated by Jellicent, he flung his hands forward and shot a dozen razor sharp rocks from his palms. The attack was accurate and quick, raking Jellicent with the shotgun of stones. Cuts of varying lengths were left on her body as the stones ceased. Just as the attack ended, Rhyperior's body flared with black sparks.

"How cute," The Guy commented. "Jellicent, Recover."

With a mischievous smirk, Jellicent's entire body glowed a bright pink for a moment. When the light faded, her cuts had vanished.

"Grrr..." the hiker growled. "Rhyperior, Stone Edge, once more!"

"Rhy, rhy, rhy, r-" As Rhyperior tried to charge the attack, more black sparks erupted from his body.

"What? No..." He looked up at Jellicent who floated back and forth tauntingly. "Cursed Body... Fine then, Rhyperior, Rock Wre-..." He stopped cold.

Rhyperior had fallen to his knees. Sweat poured down his body while his breathing was hard and uneven. The poison was getting to him.

The Guy looked at Jellicent and nodded. '(A bit sadistic, but I could tell Jellicent would be best at this technique. I'm also quite impressed with her defenses... That Stone Edge did next to nothing on her.)'

Chandelure scoffed. '(Her defenses are decent, but she wouldn't handle one of my attacks.)' The Guy smiled at Chandelure's enthusiasm.

"Alright, Jellicent," he began, "let's go ahead and finish this. Water Spout."

Jellicent hovered away from the fallen Rhyperior and began to ascend. Her arms waved and curled in front of her as she began to channel the attack. Rhyperior was straining from the poison, but if he looked up at Jellicent, he would become infatuated. He only closed his eyes and tried to fight the poison.

A glowing globe of water condensed before Jellicent's waving arms. The ball slowly became more and more energetic, pulsing and rippling as Jellicent manipulated it.

"Rhyperior, get up!" the hiker yelled. It was clear at this point that he had no items on him to help.

Jellicent's eyes flared a piercing red. She waved her arms forward and an immense blast of water gushed out like a fire hose. The massive torrent of water crashed onto Rhyperior, engulfing him.

Jellicent didn't sustain the attack for long. She knew that The Guy didn't believe in overkill, and neither did she. The ground soaked up the excess water, leaving Rhyperior laying in a muddied pool, facedown.

"Rhyperior is unable to battle." The referee held up the red flag. The winner of the round is the challenger. It also appears that Hiker Thompson is out of usable pokemon. The victor of the battle is the challenger!"

The small crowd above cheered at The Guy.

"Woo, go challenger!"

"Yay Jellicent!"

"Woohoo!"

The Guy paid them no mind. Jellicent floated back to him. He smiled at her. "That Water Spout reminded me a lot of your Stored Power. You used it as you would have used Stored Power, didn't you? If I had to guess, I'd say you were around level 67 now." Jellicent happily bubbled. "Alright, let's see if we can actually have our questions answered around here." He turned toward the hiker, who had withdrawn Rhyperior.

"Good match, sir," he called out. The hiker nodded back at him before stepping back into his tube. The Guy turned and walked back into the doorway he had come through. The doors shut as he did, leaving him as a ghost in the darkened tube once more. He hoped nobody could see him in there.

The platform brought him back to the top, where he was greeted by the same attendant. "That was a great match!" she smiled. "For that match you earned ten battle points." She held out a small card for him.

"Thanks, but I don't need that. Now can I PLEASE go to the security floor?" His tone was both desperate and annoyed.

"Certainly. Step into the elevator and I'll send you to floor five."

"Thank you," he said with false courtesy." The elevator doors opened and he stepped inside. He personally watched as the attendant pressed the number five on the wall. '(Good... If this one is a trick I swear...)'

The doors shut and the bumpy elevator once more ascended. The Guy patiently waited with his hands in his hoodie pockets as the elevator beeped with each passing floor. Ding, four. Another ding, five.

The doors opened. The Guy stepped forward to find the floor to be a large office with computers that displayed security camera images here and there. "Finally..."

"Hmm?" A man sitting in a cubicle stood up and looked in his direction. "Oh, hello." He walked over to The Guy. "What can I do for ya?"

"Hi, are you the head of security around here?" He was straight to the point.

"No, but I'm sure I can help you out. What do you need?"

"I had a few questions regarding somebody your security cameras may have spotted." He pointed at a computer screen with a black and white still photo on the screen. The man stared at him intently, listening. "I saw on the news recently that somebody from Team Plasma had been spotted in these parts. Light hair, long cloak with the insignia on it?"

"Ah, yes, our cameras have captured that man's image multiple times, yes he is around here."

The Guy's eyes widened as his expression turned serious. "When was the last time he was spotted on camera?"

"The last time he was on camera was about eight hours ago, but we had to shut down our cameras for some time for maintenance. While we were doing a systems check, someone saw him out the window over there." He pointed at the giant glass windows that served as walls.

The Guy began to walk over to the window. "I see. How long ago was that?"

"Are you after this guy or something? He might be dangerous; I don't think a kid like you should be going after-"

"How long ago..." he paused without looking at the man. "...was that?"

The man stared at him silently for a moment. "...Well I'd say about two hours ago."

The Guy looked out the window onto the broken streets below. The sun was beginning to disappear over the horizon, and the daylight had begun to fade.

"He typically is seen wandering the abandoned part of town. He's even gone into that herb shop a few times."

"I see... And when he was seen earlier, how often did he go... Hey!" The Guy pressed his hands against the glass and stared down at the herb shop. Out of the front door, a white haired man wearing a cloak walked out. "There he is!" he yelled, viciously poking the glass in his direction. He instantly turned around and bolted at full speed toward the open elevator.

"Hey, don't go after him! You'll get hurt!" the man yelled before running after him.

The Guy punched the button to send the elevator to the first floor and ran straight to the now-closing door.

"You don't know what you're getting yourself into! Come back he-" he stopped. As he was yelling to The Guy, the elevator door closed around his leg. His leg continued forward and phased through the door like nothing. The man only blinked in bewilderment.

The elevator descended at an agonizingly slow speed. "Come on, COME ON!" He pounded his fists onto the closed doors. The LED numbers dropped so slowly that he wanted to scream. "HURRY THE HELL UP!" Two...

One. Beep. The doors opened, and he instantly sprinted as fast as he could toward the door. Several bystanders stood in his path, and he swiftly weaved his way past them.

The lady at the front desk waved at him. "Have a good-" He was out the door already. "...day sir..."

He stopped shortly out of the building and looked around. His pokemon were flooding his mind with thoughts, but in his rush he didn't hear them. Which way did he go? Where could he have hidden? He frantically darted his eyes back and forth before bolting forward. A Trubbish slowly waddled out of an alleyway.

It caught his eye. '(It's running away from something...)' His eyes focused forward, and he ran down an alley on the left. At the end of the alleyway, he saw a humanoid shadow against the back wall that walked away to the right.

His eyes glowered as he sprinted faster. His pokemon were all screaming '(Right! Right! Right!)'

He slid sideways at the end of the alleyway and saw the Team Plasma insignia spread on the back of a cloak before him.

"STOP!" he yelled as loudly as he could.

"Hmm?" The white haired sage turned his head to him.


	11. Chapter 11: Deviation and Reprisal

11 - Deviation and Reprisal

The Guy intensely glared at the sage with building rage. His pokemon were as distraught as he, furiously screaming '(He's one of them! He was one of the ones who helped kill you!)' His white knuckles were clenched so tightly that blood ran down his palms and dripped, each drop disappearing midair before it made contact with the ground.

Hatred burned in The Guy's eyes as he stared directly into the sage's. The sage blinked, trying to comprehend what he was looking at. In unholy realization, he staggered backward in shock, almost falling onto the concrete.

"Y...Y-you...!" A look of horror developed in his face at the sight of The Guy.

The Guy's teeth were grinding as he spoke. "That's right..."

"But...but you..." He stopped, gasping for breath. "You... I saw Tyranitar kill you... There was no way you could have survived!" Sweat rolled down the sides of his face while his eyes were shaking in fear.

The Guy's expression didn't change. "Oh really? Then what do you suppose I am?"

Somehow, the sage seemed to regain his composure. His face and hands relaxed as he took a short breath. "How did you escape the room unscathed? Your pokemon were weak; there was no way out of the room other than the door we stood by, what trickery allowed you to escape?"

Although the sage spoke calmly, The Guy could still see twisted emotions in his eyes. "That's not of any importance to you. What is important is the fact that you helped them attack me!" He stomped forward with his fist clenched at his side.

The sage didn't flinch. "I had no choice in the matter. I was given orders from-"

"I don't care if god himself told you to! Life is not expendable, not under ANY circumstances!" He looked away for a moment with his pokemon in mind. "I learned that lesson the hard, permanent way, and I swore under everything that I am and to my pokemon that I would make every single one of you pay... Every last Team Plasma TRASH!"

The sage put his hands up. "I understand what you're saying, but I didn't want to do what I did! As soon as we were out of that room, I went the high sage to-"

The Guy's eyes widened. "To what? To chat? To feed his Tyranitar a baby? To ask him to dance on my grave?!"

The sage was taken aback. "What? No, I went up to-"

"To kill him?"

The sage stopped and slowly looked into The Guy's burning eyes. Something about his raging glare felt...off... The blood colored sunset was visible behind him, the sun halfway concealed by the horizon. How did he know? How was he here interrogating him? What... What was he?

"I knew it... You DID kill him..."

"I did it as an act of contrition for the horrors committed in that black stone room. I thought that we had killed you-"

"You helped them put us in this condition." He took another step forward.

In reaction to his advancement, the first Pokeball at the sage's belt began to lightly crackle with electricity. The sage once again maintained composure. "What condition?"

"You helped them take what is most precious in this world from us..." He stomped forward another step. His pokemon were burning with energy more and more as he stepped closer to their enemy.

"Take what? I have no idea what you-"

"And you complicated our ability to find peace!" He quickly swiped the fourth Pokeball off of his belt. "And now...you're going to pay..."

The sage's eyes glimmered. "Look, I'm not your enemy; as soon as left that accursed prison cell, I denounced my affiliation with Team Plasma."

"Your cloak says otherwise..." He gripped the Pokeball tightly.

The sage looked over his shoulder at the unmistakable emblem that decorated his cloak. He seemed surprised that it was there.

He put his hands up once more. "I swear, I'm not one of those monsters." He closed his eyes and lowered his head. "I won't fight you..."

"You showed us no mercy..." He drew his arm back. "I intend to do the same!" He hastily threw Gengar's Pokeball straight toward the defenseless sage. In midair, it burst open with ghostly light, vaulting Gengar outward.

Gengar's face was twisted and demonic as she had allowed herself to become engulfed in her thirst for vengeance. She burst beyond her full speed toward the sage and quickly manipulated the shadows around her.

"GAAAAAAARRRRRR!" she hissed menacingly. In an instant, a swirling Shadow Ball exploded forward and crashed into the sage's unprotected stomach.

His face contorted in blinding pain as the Shadow Ball erupted into his body, knocking him into the air and onto the brick wall behind him.

"AAAGH" he blurted as his spine chipped a piece of brick off of the wall. He fell to the concrete ground in a painful heap.

The Guy stared at him remorselessly, his desire for revenge not even close to being sated. Slowly, the sage picked himself up and onto his knees, his hand covering where the attack had impacted.

He slowly looked up at The Guy with one eye wincing shut. "G...Gengar?" He looked horribly confused. Last he saw The Guy, Gengar wasn't a part of his team. "...fine..." He breathed heavily as he rose to his feet. "You've been consumed by rage... You're even willing to attack a submissive opponent... That's not the kid I saw back in the castle..." The Guy only glared daggers at him. "If I have to knock some sense into you, then so be it..." He slowly grabbed the second Pokeball on his belt.

The Guy and Gengar were already prepared for whatever he was going to send out. All of their frustrations, even their blazing fury toward Tyranitar was redirected at the wounded man before them. Without even noticing, they truly did become consumed by their desire for reprisal; their thoughts became hazy, they developed tunnel vision, and pure rage was the only emotion within them all. All seven of them turned into monsters themselves bent on revenge.

The sage strained as he tossed the Pokeball toward Gengar. "B-Bisharp... You're needed."

The Pokeball hit the ground, snapping it open in a burst of yellow light, and Bisharp proudly took a battle stance. She immediately looked to see whom she was battling against and saw Gengar.

"Bisharp!" she quickly cried out as she readied her blades for combat. As she stood with her arm-blades crossed, her vision drifted away from Gengar and toward the trainer.

"S-Sharp?!" Bisharp's eyes widened as her pupils shrunk. The Guy glowered back at her with hostility, piercing Bisharp with his glare. It was him...! The kid in that room... The one who she was ordered to fight... The kid who...

_The kid screamed as each bladed stone stabbed every part of his body. Blood splashed across the room, a single droplet landing on Bisharp's bladed head. She maintained her battle face, but inside, she was horrified, both at the sight she helped cause and at the fact that she was forced to call Tyranitar her ally..._

Sweat rolled off of Bisharp's nervous face. Then who... Who was this new pokemon...?

She looked into Gengar's furious eyes. The red glow burned brighter and brighter as she stared into them. They seemed familiar...

Deep within Gengar's eyes, she saw the trainer's Scrafty glaring back at her.

"B-Bi...Bisharp...!" She staggered backwards in cold realization and unreal fear. They really didn't escape that room alive...

"Bisharp, what's the matter?" the sage inquired. He had never seen any of his pokemon so distraught.

They were dead...but...they were here...!

"Snap out of it Bisharp!"

They returned...

"BISHARP!"

Bisharp blinked, breaking her focus. "Bi?"

"Bisharp, dodge it!"

She looked over toward the undead foes she faced and saw a concentrated Shadow Ball hurtling toward her. "Sharp!" The agile Bisharp leapt out of danger as the Shadow Ball crashed onto the ground, spraying shadow energy against the buildings. In midair, she looked upon them, who returned with their own gleaming eyes. Fear washed over her, but she knew she had no choice but to fight back at her master's command.

"Charge forward then hack him with Night Slash." The sage continued to hold his injured stomach.

Gengar watched with focused perception as Bisharp deftly landed on the ground and used the force of impact to dash forward toward her. She stood her ground and glared once more into Bisharp's eyes. Her aim and momentum were perfect, but it was clear her attack wasn't at full power. Fear was rattling her mind, an unholy fear of the reanimated dead. She charged straight at her at nearly full speed with her arm-blades ablaze with a black energy.

The very moment that Gengar calculated her next move, The Guy yelled out exactly what she was thinking.

"Confuse Ray, then strafe behind her!"

As Bisharp was about to be in range of attacking, Gengar raised her arms into the air. Energy flowed to her fingertips, and a bright burst of light flashed straight onto Bisharp.

"Bisharp!" she yelled out, covering her eyes from the disorienting flare. Her thoughts muddled, and she quickly began to lose her balance.

"Don't stop, continue the attack!" the sage barked. He immediately winced and covered his wound after shouting.

Gengar silently danced in a semicircle behind Bisharp as she attempted to regain her vision.

"Now, backstab her with a Focus Blast," The Guy commanded. His voice sounded deathly.

The sage's eyes widened. Gengar began to channel her energy into a super-condensed ball of fighting energy. "Bisharp, behind you. Get it with Night Slash."

Bisharp's arms reignited with black light. Still off balance, she began to wildly swing randomly around her, almost hitting the wall nearby. None of the swings made contact with anything.

Gengar was almost finished with creating her attack when Bisharp sharply turned and cleaved her directly with her left blade, breaking the Focus Blast.

"Gaaaar!" she cried out as she was sliced by her type weakness. The force of the attack sent her flying backwards, and she landed on the ground facedown.

"Gengar!" The Guy yelled as he clenched his fist. "Are you ok?"

Shaking, Gengar pushed herself back onto her feet. A fine, straight cut divided her torso diagonally, but no blood flowed from it. "Gar!"

The sun slowly fell behind The Guy, twisting shadows here and there across the alleyway. As the natural light began to vanish from the sky, darkness crept in.

"Alright Gengar, make sure you evade all of her attacks; they're all short ranged." It was strange. Every time he gave her instructions, she had been thinking of them as he spoke...

"Use your speed! Hit her with a Focus Blast while moving!" He pointed at her commandingly. As he did, a small cloud of pale-blue smoke puffed out of his arm.

The sage's eyes caught the brief moment.

"Gengar!" She quickly began to use her feet. Very lightly, she began to move around the battlefield silently as Bisharp began to come to her senses.

"You can't out-speed her, Bisharp," said the sage. He seemed to have regained strength since being blasted by Gengar. "Focus on her movements while using Hone Claws. When she moves in to attack, counter with Aerial Ace."

Bisharp nodded at the sage. As Gengar began to pick up speed around her, Bisharp began to sharpen her claws against one another.

Her eyes followed her every move. A glowing orange ball of energy formed in Gengar's hands as she glided rapidly in circles around Bisharp, leaving a blazing trail behind. Soon, the attack was prepared, and as she blurred around the alleyway, pulsing cracks of electricity danced behind her.

Bisharp's eyes never left her even when she reached top speed. Neither the sage nor The Guy could focus on Gengar despite the glowing energy. She stopped sharpening her claws and waited, crouching.

The Guy wanted to yell out to finish the attack, but he knew Bisharp would hear and know when it was coming. He trusted Gengar would know the right moment.

She held the attack in her hands and watched Bisharp intently while moving as fast as she could around her. She knew The Guy was waiting for her to make her move, and that she had to make it on her own. But as she waited for the perfect time to strike, Bisharp never lost sight of her. Even when she was behind her, she knew that Bisharp was aware of what she was doing.

'(Gar...)' She shifted her weight.

Bisharp caught the change and shifted her stance.

With great precision, Gengar leapt off of the ground and dashed straight for Bisharp with all the built up momentum she could muster.

Bisharp quickly shifted her feet to turn toward Gengar. Her right claw ignited with a white glow as she faced her.

"GAAAAAARRRR!"

"SHAAAAAAAARRRRP!"

Gengar released the Focus Blast straight toward Bisharp's head. At the same time, Bisharp's right claw hooked beneath Gengar, aimed for her body.

An explosion rattled the entire block. The sage raised his arm to block the dust.

The Guy yelled out with the dust swirling past him. "Gengar!"

The force of the blast funneled out of the exits of the alley, pushing several confused Trubbish out and into the streets. Garbage cans and dumpsters knocked over and spewed paper trash all around.

The force expended itself, and brown dust concealed the combatants on the field.

"Gengar!" he cried out once more. He wasn't prepared to lose anybody again.

The sage focused in as much as he could, trying to see what had happened.

The smoke slowly faded, and the battlefield became visible throughout the transparent haze. Lying on the ground, both Bisharp and Gengar didn't move.

'(Gengar...)' he thought.

Neither pokemon moved in the dead silence. The force of each attack was massive; Bisharp's bladed head was cracked and bleeding with a piece of the blade chipped off, while Gengar laid facedown with her arm beneath her.

He couldn't take it. He rushed onto the field and immediately grabbed Gengar. As he turned her over, he was horrified.

Her hand was clutching where her heart was, but he could still see the damage. Bisharp's attack had pierced straight through.

Both sorrow and shock began to build in him when he felt a presence in his mind.

'(G...Gengar?)' He listened. '(Scrafty? Is that you?)'

Weak impulses responded. '(Y-es, it's… me,)' Gengar weakly thought. '(Did…did I get her?)'

A nervous smile cracked his face. '(Yeah…yeah you got her. But that wound in your chest…)'

'(I…think it was a mortal wound, but...I'm still here.)'

He hugged his fallen pokemon tightly against him. '(Oh thank you... Thank you...)'

'(This sage…)' thought Dusclops. '(How dare he do that to Scrafty after all he's already done to us…)'

'(It's not enough that he killed us,)' Jellicent added. '(He's going to try to kill us all over again.)'

'(We won't give him the chance,)' Dusclops continued. '(Let me out next! Let me show this sage that we won't be defeated by Team Plasma ever again.)' The tone in his thoughts was completely hostile.

Almost drowning their thoughts out, The Guy stood up with Gengar in his arms. '(Interesting...)' he thought. He pulled her Pokeball off of his belt and aimed it at her. As the beam sucked her into the ball, he thought to himself and his pokemon, '(Even if dealt a lethal blow, they only faint because they're already dead...)'

He snapped the Pokeball back onto the fourth spot on his belt and pulled the first one off.

"Which means I don't have to hold back!" He threw Dusclops' Pokeball in front of the fallen Bisharp.

The sage had a pained look in his eye at the sight of his ravaged pokemon. As he pulled out Bisharp's Pokeball and returned her, The Guy's disposition faltered.

'(He...actually cared that his pokemon was hurt...)'

Reluctantly, the sage pulled out another Pokeball. The look on his eye seemed as though he didn't want to put up his pokemon against such merciless attackers... "Ferrothorn, you're needed."

The ball landed close to where Bisharp had fallen, and Ferrothorn was summoned on the spot in a burst of yellow light.

"Ferrothorn," he quickly cried. With no ceiling, his tendrils clung onto the walls nearby.

"Watch yourself Ferrothorn, this trainer and his pokemon aren't going to hold anything back."

The Guy continued to contemplate the sage's motives. '(It's strange... He's ruthless and oblivious to other people's pain, but it seems that unlike the others in Team Plasma, he actually has feelings for his pokemon...)'

'(Are you believing that?)' Froslass questioned. '(Why would you believe that anybody in Team Plasma would even have feelings? I figured by now you would know that after being on the business end of their "feelings".)'

'(Well, when you think about it...)' He looked over at the sage, who was looking away from the battlefield. '(What choice did he have...? I mean, he received orders from his superior, from his...)'

An image of the high sage standing before his demonic Tyranitar flashed in his mind.

'(...from his ally...)' He clenched his fists tightly and glared hard at the sage. '(Forget it... There's no way that anybody who would willingly work with those devils could possibly be worth sparing!)' "Dusclops, Will-o-Wisp!" he commanded as he pointed at Ferrothorn.

The sage seemed to be shocked back into the battle from whatever it was he was thinking about. "Ferrothorn, Gyro Ball through it."

Dusclops' eye glimmered with a blood red light as blue embers began to dance around his hands. Without hesitation, he released the flames toward Ferrothorn in a volley of fire bombs.

As the attack moved toward him, Ferrothorn began to rotate on an axis. The revolving started very slowly at first, but gradually became faster and faster until he reached a violent apex of torque. The spines that protruded from his sides quickly began to blur into solid moving blades.

The blue ember crashed into Ferrothorn in a burst of pale blue cinders, but his momentum didn't falter. The attack failed, and the whirling cyclone of steel homed in on Dusclops.

The Guy smiled. "Brace yourself, Dusclops."

Dusclops quickly raised his clenched hands in front of him just before Ferrothorn made impact. He crashed into Dusclops with great torqued momentum and tried to dig his spines into the seemingly squishy ghost-type.

The sage's face contorted in surprise. Although still revolving at a high speed, Ferrothorn was held in place by Dusclops' block. The spines raked and tore at the back of his fists violently and sent bright sparks upward, but his guard held, making it seem as though his body was tougher than steel.

"Keep up the pressure, Ferrothorn."

"Your guard is stronger than his attack Dusclops. Hold your ground and begin to use Double Team!" More blue fog puffed off of him, this time in a much more noticeable manner. Without him realizing it, his visage began to die in the darkness. His pants seemed to be less blue and more red, his hoodie was no longer black, but instead was gray except for a large splotch across the back and shoulders, his shirt began to monochromatically flip between black and white, but most notably, his eyes seemed illuminated despite the sun being low.

The sage couldn't look away from him for more than a few seconds at a time. What on earth was he witnessing...?

On the battlefield, Ferrothorn continued to grind against Dusclops' unbreakable guard as several images of Dusclops began to duplicate from him. Soon there were five of him, then ten, then a dozen.

Dusclops confidently held his ground, but was surprised when Ferrothorn's attack began to soften. His spinning began to slow, and the constant pressure exerted had begun to ease.

Ferrothorn quickly broke away from Dusclops and hung before him, breathing hard.

The Guy was as surprised as Dusclops was at Ferrothorn's retreat. His attack was near perfect, so why would he stop?

"Ferrothorn, why have you stopped att-" The sage cut himself off, caught off-guard at Ferrothorn's condition.

'(Why did he...what?)' The Guy thought.

Dusclops stared at Ferrothorn with pride. A savage burn had been established across Ferrothorn's frontal underbelly. Will-o-Wisp hadn't failed after all.

Dusclops smiled to himself.

"Great job Dusclops. I think you know what to do from here..."

"Dusclops." Quickly, Dusclops converged with his other images for a moment before scattering himself among them randomly around the alley, making it impossible to distinguish him from the other scapegoats.

"Thorn..." Ferrothorn winced as he tried to identify the real foe before him, but each of them gave the same glowering stare.

"Ferrothorn, Iron Defense and Reflect. Stack your defense as best you can." A mild sense of urgency had settled in his voice.

"Ferro!" Ferrothorn's steel body began to develop a noticeable luster as it hardened. At the same time, a glassy wall of pink light condensed between him and all of the Dusclops images before him.

"That won't help you now," The Guy yelled. "Dusclops, Night Shade!"

All of the images of Dusclops placed their hands before them. Dark electricity crackled in their palms as the attack was prepared.

Ferrothorn waited nervously. Which direction would the attack come from? Left? Right? Above?

Just before the replicas launched their attack, something caught his eye. An image of Dusclops high in the air winced as the Night Shade bolted from his hands.

Ferrothorn caught the glimpse, and as all of the strands of shadow energy shot toward him, he pulled himself away from one specific bolt. It crashed into the ground and made a physical impact.

"What?!" The Guy blurted.

Ferrothorn regained his position on the battlefield. While still burnt, he grew confident after seeing Dusclops' folly.

'(How on earth did he...)' The Guy looked up at Dusclops and was instantly shocked. Upon closer inspection, Dusclops' hands had been partially shredded from Ferrothorn's Gyro Ball. Flayed ghost-skin protruded up out of the backs of his hands.

'(Amazing,)' he thought. '(As a Serperior, he had always been about having a solid defense. Now he's become a pokemon with even greater defenses, and yet Ferrothorn could still deal that much damage to him while burnt.)' He looked over at the sage. '(He's no ordinary Team Plasma leader.)' His pokemon continued to watch in focused silence.

Dusclops descended back to earth, his replicas dispersing one by one. He stared hard at Ferrothorn, breathing somewhat heavily from the delayed pain he was now feeling. Ferrothorn returned the glare, also damaged to the same degree as his foe.

The combatants and their trainers stared each other down in a brief ceasefire. As they did, the sun plummeted below the horizon line, leaving only its excess light in the sky. One by one, several street lights began to activate across the city, but not in the alleyway. For the battlers in the alley, only darkness would surround them.

The sage looked at The Guy in a confused state of surrealism. The light visibly faded quickly, and his image continued to shift.

"Come on Dusclops! I know you're hurt, but we have the advantage!"

His pants were no longer blue, but were a dark shade of brick red.

"Ferrothorn is burned! Keep up the pressure and he'll go down first!"

His shirt became pitch black with the exception of the shielded design on the front, which had become pure white.

"He won't be able to attack you as hard."

His hoodie became a ghostly white. A dark red mess coated the shoulders and back. It almost seemed like blood...

"We can't lose this battle... Not after what happened..."

His skin was a transparent pale blue, from his hands to his face. His eyes were aglow with an unholy pale yellow light. His pupils were nothing more than unfilled circles.

"Remember what they did to us..." Tears welled up in his eyes. "We can't let them get away after what they did!"

The sage staggered backwards in fear, the same fear that Bisharp had experienced before him.

"What... What are you?!" he stammered.

"We are dead," he coldly stated.

At that moment, Dusclops' fury exploded forward in an immense blast of Night Shade. The wild bolts of shadow energy crashed into the stunned Ferrothorn in an explosive surge of anger and strife. Both Dusclops and Ferrothorn screamed in pain as the attack persisted far longer than it should have.

"FERRROOOOOOOOOOO!"

Dusclops exhausted every last bit of his burning energy in the attack. He felt as though his blood was boiling, that he couldn't stop himself from giving everything that he had to attack, no, to kill them.

The attack ended, dropping Ferrothorn to the ground with a heavy crash. Dusclops breathed heavily, his eye burning a bright red.

Ferrothorn now on the ground, the sage stood still, paralyzed in fear of the vengeful spirits he had just fought.

"You were with them..." The Guy began. "You tried to separate us, to break the bond we mutually shared. Team Plasma said they would separate humans and pokemon forever, that the pokemon you 'liberated' from their trainers would be returned to the wild..." He stepped forward, his fist clenched in front of him. "But that was a LIE!"

The sage flinched at the last word. "W-what?"

"When I first saw you, you ran up to N and presented him a pokemon you had pilfered. It was a Dusclops, was it not?"

The sage nervously nodded his head, almost shamefully.

"During my time in the castle, I fought against an executive. Do you know what pokemon he used against me?"

The sage's eyes widened. "No..." he breathed in disbelief.

"The very same Dusclops!" He stomped forward once more.

"How... How can that be? I personally delivered it to N..."

"Well he took that agonized Dusclops and liberated it of its mind."

The sage couldn't believe what he was hearing.

Dusclops hovered next to The Guy, scowling at the sage. "You killed me, and then tried to take my pokemon away... I swore I would make every last one of you pay..." Dusclops' hands became electrified with black lightning.

"Please! I didn't want to-"

"Didn't want to?! You didn't want to help kill, but you did anyway?"

"LISTEN TO ME!" the sage exploded in defense.

The Guy was taken aback by his outburst. The sage looked torn. His expression looked both panicked, and yet calm as he spoke. "Let me explain..."

The Guy stared at him expectantly. For some reason, his sudden outburst disarmed him, and he wanted to hear what he had to say.

"I wasn't the first person in the castle who was shocked to see a child battling our master. After seeing you had lost, I figured it was all over, that N would have simply continued on and told the other sages to release you after taking your pokemon from you."

He looked down. "But I was wrong..." The Guy was surprised. The sage seemed to be genuinely remorseful. Dusclops relaxed his hands and listened attentively. Even the rest of his pokemon were listening carefully, their rage having subsided.

"When he sages brought in iron chains to bind you with, I wanted to protest. You are- " He gulped, clearly nervous about talking about the subject. "…were...a child... They had no right to show such savagery toward you..."

The Guy held his wrists, almost feeling the chains that once bound him.

"When we were in the room, I was begging in my mind that the high sage wasn't going to use force, that you would miraculously hand over your pokemon..." A deeper fear had emerged in his eyes. "I prayed that I wouldn't have to see his Tyranitar again..."

The Guy's expression softened. "...Who are you?"

The sage looked up at him. "My name is Fuzh. I was forced into Team Plasma at a very young age when they first started forming. In my hometown, a man named Ghetsis was preaching to the town about pokemon's rights. At first he seemed so genuine and meaningful..."

He paused, clearly visualizing his past

"...but then he gave the command. At the end of his speech, he commanded the men and woman in gray hoods behind him to surround the crowd and pick out young children. He said they could be used in his plans to divide the world between pokemon and people..." A large man charged up to me and scooped me up out of my parents' reach. We were immediately taken aboard these large vehicles. That was the last time I had seen my parents."

The Guy only stared at Fuzh, speechless.

"I am deeply sorry for what the high sage had done to you, but please understand, I didn't have a choice in the matter." He looked down once more.

They quietly stood in the alleyway without saying a word. Night had fallen, and only moonlight provided mild lighting for the alley.


	12. Chapter 12: Unfinished Business

12 - Unfinished Business

Nightfall had settled across the Unova region, beckoning the tired pokemon and humans of the area to return to their warm settlements and prepare for a well-deserved night of rest. Many lights across Opelucid City flickered off, signaling passersby to not disturb the residence of each building until the morning sun arose at dawn. Even the wild pokemon concealed in the nooks and crannies of the city returned to their makeshift homes made of cardboard and tossed trash can lids to ease the night away.

In the older parts of the city, several shopkeepers turned the signs in front of their stores before securely locking the door to ensure no hoodlums or renegade Trubbish would break in. As one man left his barely running store for the night, he walked his usual path through safe alleyways to reach the main road that led to his home. Little did he know that just behind a building he passed by, a man and his pokemon were being confronted by a group of lost souls.

The Guy didn't look at Fuzh, but only stared at the ground as Fuzh did, his glowing eyes shaded by his hair. Dusclops looked toward a wall, deep in thought and trying to avoid making eye contact with anybody. Nobody in the alleyway made a sound for what felt like an agonizing eternity of misunderstanding.

"...The abduction of children..." The Guy quietly said, breaking the silence. "I knew that Team Plasma was twisted, but..." He turned his head away.

Dusclops hung his head in cold disbelief, his eye closed. Fuzh didn't say a word in response, but only stared at the ground, apparently swept with flashbacks.

The Guy lifted his head up slightly. "But...why?" Fuzh slowly looked up at him. "Why would you continue to follow them after all these years?"

Fuzh's face expressed hidden sorrow, as if all his life he had worn a plastic face to keep others from knowing how he was feeling. His eyes looked somewhat tired, as if what he was about to say was kept bottled up for many painful years.

"...When we arrived at the original Team Plasma base, I was quickly singled out of the others as somewhat of a favorite..."

He turned his head away slightly. "Ghetsis immediately made plans on how he would use me... Without wasting any time, he gave me five pilfered pokemon and a stack of pictures of people. He told me…

"_Find each of these trainers. They have powerful pokemon with them and could be a threat to us. I want you to find them, and...liberate their pokemon._

"I was going to protest, but he quickly pulled out a large map. It had red markings all around each city. He told me…

"_We need you to take out their trainers and make sure they won't be capable of retaliation. If you don't, we'll send our stationed raids after them instead. I'm sure you wouldn't want innocent bystanders to lose their pokemon...would you?"_

The Guy stared at Fuzh with a twisted sense of sympathy. Could what this man was saying...be true?

"Ever since then, I had been doing the bidding of Ghetsis and N in hopes that they'd commend me, and free me of this wretched assignment. But they never did." Fuzh placed his right hand upon the first Pokeball on his belt. "I'm only glad that they never noticed the Magnemite I had with me when I was captured."

The Guy looked at the Pokeball. Very lightly, a small spray of sparks pulsed between Fuzh's fingers. That Magnemite must have been his only friend.

"I never had the incentive to truly betray Team Plasma...until I saw what happened." He looked up at The Guy.

The Guy's visage continued to flow with lifeless energy, making his presence in the alleyway cold and somewhat miserable. "...so that's why you killed Ghetsis..." he quietly muttered.

"Actually, that wasn't Ghetsis," Fuzh clarified.

The Guy looked up in surprise at Fuzh.

"Ghetsis is even higher ranked than that sage. He only used the high sage as a pawn in his greater plans."

"Then who's Ghetsis?" The Guy's redirected fury toward Fuzh had all but evaporated.

Fuzh looked away. "...Sometimes I think Ghetsis is the true leader of Team Plasma, and that he has been manipulating N from the beginning. He's basically second in command for Team Plasma, just below N."

"So is Ghetsis even more powerful than the high sage?" The Guy asked. The very thought of another thug in Team Plasma that had a pokemon even more devilish, more evil than Tyranitar... It gave him conscious nightmares.

Fuzh looked away slightly for a moment. "Overall, yes, but he doesn't have any pokemon as monstrous as..."

They both paused. It wasn't hard to guess whom Fuzh was referring to, and it was clear that neither of them even wanted to utter the name. '(Even Ghetsis,)' he thought, '(who is more powerful than that sage, must have been afraid of Tyranitar... He feared having to use him, and instead dumped it into someone else's possession... Wait a second...!)'

_The sage lay dead in the shallow water. At his waist, his Pokeballs were missing, including..._

The Guy shot a glance straight at Fuzh. "What happened to him?"

Fuzh looked back up to him. "Oh, well I had sent Empoleon out and drenched the room, then Magnezone-"

"No, no," The Guy cut him off, "I mean, what happened to his pokemon? To Tyranitar? When I was in the room, the sage didn't have any Pokeballs."

"Oh, well during our argument, I had swiped them away. Out of anger, I..." His eyes became unfocused. "...threw them out the castle window..." He looked back at The Guy in cold realization.

"You didn't make sure Tyranitar was incapacitated?!" he exploded. "Or better yet, dead?!" Dusclops' expression twisted into horrible disbelief.

"We were at least fifty stories high in the air. There was no way that he could have survived."

"And what if he did?"

Fuzh visibly began to sweat.

"What if that demon survived the fall and found a way out of his Pokeball?!" The Guy yelled. "For all you know, when you threw his Pokeball out the window, you might have summoned him!" The Guy's pokemon began to grow restless. Chandelure, Froslass, and Golurk argued as to what action should be taken, Jellicent tried throwing in her ideas, and Gengar was in a less-than-mannered panic. Outside of his Pokeball, Dusclops tried to fight off fear.

Fuzh looked away slightly in realization of his error, then back at The Guy. "We have to go back."

The Guy nodded at him in agreement.

"We have to go back and make sure that he's down... If he managed to get away..." Fuzh looked hard into The Guy's glowing, dead eyes. The longer he stared, the more it seemed to burn his own soul. "More people may suffer your fate."

The Guy's eyes burned brightly for a moment. "There's no time to waste. Let's go!" The Guy pulled Golurk's Dusk Ball off of his belt and slammed it into the ground. It burst open violently in a blast of dark light, summoning Golurk on the spot. He was leaning forward and pointing, as he had just been interrupted from his arguing. At the same time, Dusclops automatically was retracted into his glowing green Dusk Ball in a beam of pale viridian light. Fuzh pulled out the sixth Pokeball on his belt loop and hastily tossed it before him. In a burst of white light, an adamant looking Skarmory emerged, letting out a proud screech.

Fuzh and The Guy nodded to each other then jumped onto their respective pokemon. Golurk and Skarmory looked at each other for a brief moment, seemingly mimicking their trainers with a tension filled nod. Not a moment later, Golurk leapt high into the air with a powerful burst of wind and cheated gravity, taking off immediately at his top speed toward the unmistakable castle in the distance. Skarmory soon followed, flapping his steel wings as if they were weightless. Several meters into the air, he shifted his position and faced toward their destination. A strong breeze gusted beneath Skarmory's wings, and he zoomed forward behind The Guy and Golurk, slicing the air with a high pitched whine while Fuzh held on with ease.

Soon the four of them were high above the skyscrapers of Opelucid City below, piercing the night sky at speeds faster than any machine in the region could hope to achieve. The Guy held on tightly to Golurk as wind billowed around them from the high speeds. His short hair was gusted back by the powerful air current, flickering rapidly like uncut grass in a hurricane. The spirit energy that flowed from his hologram of a body faded behind him, making his flight seem like a cold comet hurtling through the sky.

He looked over to Fuzh, who was now to his left rather than behind him. Fuzh was already looking at him, and he wasn't expecting to make eye contact with his neutral enemy. Fuzh only stared at him with an expression of confusion, disbelief, and what seemed to be guilt. It was as if the longer he stared at The Guy's ghost, the more he became depressed on the matter.

"What's your name?" Fuzh finally asked. The Guy was somewhat startled that Fuzh spoke to him, let alone that he could hear him at the high speeds they were moving. "I never got a chance to know your name..."

The Guy's gaze drifted downward, a saddened expression on his face. "Honestly... I don't even know."

Fuzh's expression showed surprise at his response.

"Ever since I reawakened in that dark room, the thing I wanted to know the most was who I was..." He paused. "But I couldn't even remember a hint of my name. Everyone I had talked to in Opelucid whom I recognized from the past didn't even remember me... Drayden... The official at the Battle House... Not even my opponent, whom I had fought like three times in the past!" He clenched his fists.

Fuzh only stared at him, an expression of pity on his face.

"The only thing I know about my identity is that I'm 'the guy who challenged N.' 'The guy who was killed in that prison cell.' No name, just The Guy..."

He looked up at Fuzh once more. "That's all I am now... The Guy..."

Fuzh didn't respond, but instead looked away. In his mind, The Guy desperately wished that he had given this sage his name before his murder, so at least one person knew... Even if they were his enemy... But was Fuzh really his enemy?

His mind flashed back.

_"Bisharp, you're needed." The trainer focused on the Tyranitar that was summoned in front of him, but from the corner of his eye, he felt a weaker battle energy from the sage on the left. He ignored the feeling, but it remained in his gut._

The Guy looked ahead and downward. The buildings that blurred beneath him were much smaller than the ones they had already passed. He closed his eyes for a moment. '(Why did you fight...?)' he thought.

Memories borrowed from his pokemon began to emerge.

_Hundreds and hundreds of the fist-sized jagged stones sliced his body to shreds, gushing blood onto them all. One stone pierced through his cracked ribs and impaled his heart, blasting through it like a needle through a water filled balloon. The excess blood splashed onto them from the exit wound in his back, bringing them all to the brink of sorrow-wrought insanity. Behind their dying world, a sage with his back turned, another watching with interest, and one more that looked on with..._

The Guy opened his eyes to look at Fuzh a second time. No longer looking in his direction, Fuzh stared downward with a look of bloody horror in his unfocused eyes. After all of the events that had conspired in such a short time, he must have been feeling all of the accumulated tension all at once.

The Guy's expression softened. '(It's not your fault...)' he thought. It was strange to be sympathetic toward one of your murderers, but he felt that he couldn't hold a grudge against someone who wished to have no part in such a dark endeavor. To a certain extent, his pokemon were glad that he was a forgiving spirit. Their negativity toward Fuzh was still present, but they felt they could tolerate his presence for their trainer's sake.

Soon the buildings below them disappeared as they crossed the Opelucid City limits. Trees, tall grass, and shifty terrain made up the majority of the route with the exception of the weathered path that stretched down to Victory Road. The high speeds of Golurk and Skarmory sent a powerful boom of air across the landscape, bending back the branches and trunks of the trees.

The cliffs of Victory Road emerged before them along with the prevalent castle in the background. The Guy looked over once more to Fuzh. His eyes were straight forward toward Team Plasma's castle as he held onto Skarmory's steel body tightly. Fear and anticipation were visible in him, and it was clear that he was just as afraid of Tyranitar's possible existence as he was...

...or maybe he was more afraid? If anybody here knew what that Tyranitar was truly capable of, it would be him...

The Guy swallowed, trying not to think about it. The closer they came to the castle, the more the both of them became tense. The Guy's pokemon were silent, as they shared in The Guy's emotional stress. Gengar was still panicking to herself.

At last, they passed over the pokemon league complex, still abandoned. The four of them looked up at the castle before them, all feeling uneasy; none of them had had any intentions of returning to this wretched place. The Guy faced forward, but he could tell that Fuzh was looking at him, trying to gauge what emotions were running through him.

They quickly maneuvered around to the side of the castle where they wouldn't be spotted. In unison, Golurk and Skarmory landed as silently as they could onto the soft ground below. Fuzh carefully dismounted Skarmory, making sure his feet didn't make too loud of a thud as he landed on the ground. He looked over to the others to see Golurk standing straight up with The Guy upright on his shoulders. Without hesitation, The Guy leapt off of Golurk and fell quickly to the ground, making Fuzh almost protest his lack of subtlety. However, as his feet made solid contact with the ground, no sound was heard.

The Guy looked up at Fuzh, who looked away slightly, not wanting to see The Guy as a spirit.

In a low, quiet voice, he spoke. "Alright. The room we were in was near the top floor of the castle on the west side." He pointed up at the castle wall, suggesting that their target was on the other side of the castle.

"Are there still Team Plasma grunts crawling around here?" The Guy inquired.

"Tons of them," Fuzh replied. "Although Lord-" he hesitated, clearly trying to break the habit of addressing his former leader formally. "...although N had left, Ghetsis would have sent only himself and a few elites to follow N. All leftover grunts and executives should be here by now."

"Lovely," The Guy blurted in sarcasm. The thought of there being hundreds of Team Plasma underlings within the fortress walls made his pokemon's blood boil. Massive pulses of vicious energy flowed from them into The Guy's mind.

'(Settle down, guys,)' he thought. '(We're not here to kick everyone's teeth in. That's for...another day...)' He smiled. '(Trust me, you will all have your chance at vindication. However...)' His mental energy turned serious as his smile faded. '(As far as we know, there may be many more people in Team Plasma who are like Fuzh... They may have had no choice in the matter.)' The six of them became uneasy. 'So when the day comes for utter reprisal, please, don't be too reckless...)'

'(You're asking us to take it easy when that day comes?)' asked Dusclops.

'(That we shouldn't release all that we feel upon Team Plasma?)' added Froslass.

'(I suppose that's…doable,)' thought Chandelure.

'(Yeah. We can do that,)' thought Jellicent. Golurk and Gengar mentally nodded. However, something in their agreement felt...off...

"This way." Fuzh had already begun to round the corner of one of the castle's towers. The Guy snapped his focus back into the present and silently ran after him. The tower that marked the corner of the castle was round and in the way. A short stretch of land extended from the base of the tower to a sharp cliff side, making the terrain hazardous for anybody who attempted to sneak around the castle.

"Alright, be careful when sidling around the side of this tower," Fuzh advised. "It wasn't made for this, and if we try to fly over to the other side, we'll be spotted from the windows. Only against the wall will we be in their blind spot, even at night." He looked back toward Skarmory. "Skarmory, be prepared to catch me if I fall."

"Skarrr." Skarmory leapt down off of the cliff.

The Guy looked to Golurk behind him. The two nodded to each other, and a light brown beam of energy shot out of the third Dusk Ball at his belt toward Golurk. He dematerialized, and was quickly sucked into it.

The Guy nodded at Fuzh. Slowly, Fuzh placed his hands behind him and against the tower wall. The edges of the toes of his shoes were hanging off of the steep cliff as he shuffled his feet carefully to the side. His arms and hands tightly gripped the tower wall as he slowly rounded the tower, making sure not to look down at the dark, uneven rocks below him.

It took Fuzh over seven minutes of focused shuffling before be reached the wider ground on the other side of the tower. He dropped to his knees, catching his breath that he had held multiple times in his endeavor.

"Huh, ugh, al-, alright, you, you can go now," he stammered.

"Sup?" The Guy immediately phased out of the castle tower at walking pace.

"GAH!" Fuzh yelled in reaction, falling backwards onto his back.

"Shh, you're going to get us caught." The Guy smiled. Gengar, Dusclops, and Froslass were laughing loudly in his mind.

"Oh, shut up," Fuzh said while getting back on his feet. He looked up at a window high above them for a few moments. It was black and unlit, and nobody peaked out the window to investigate the sound. "Alright." He looked back down toward the other end of the castle. "Around that tower over there," he pointed toward the tower far down the wall, "is where the sage's belt should have landed."

The Guy looked toward the tower intently. '(Around the tower...)' Without waiting for Fuzh, he broke out into a soundless sprint toward their destination.

"Hey, wait up," Fuzh loudly whispered as he began to run after him.

'(Around this corner,)' he thought. '(Around this corner is the answer we seek.)' If his pokemon drew breath, they would be holding it right now. '(Don't be alive. Don't be alive. DON'T BE ALIVE.)' He ran faster and faster, leaving Fuzh further behind.

He bolted straight into the tower wall, phasing through it silently and without breaking speed. He quickly passed through to the other side, where his steps were greeted by grass rather than dirt and rock. There was plenty of space to stand, and the cliff wasn't as hazardous.

Immediately, he looked around on the ground. Upon scanning here and there, there didn't appear to be anything unusual around on the ground, save a few large rocks.

'(Rocks...)'

He bolted for the nearest rock and peaked behind it. Nothing.

"Wait up...they might see you..." he heard in the distance. He paid no attention to the warning.

He dashed toward another rock and kicked it powerfully aside. Nothing was behind it.

'(Dammit... Where...?!)' His dead breath quickened at the same time he felt his chest pounding. It could be behind any of them.

He kicked aside another large rock. Grass. Chandelure's soulfire raged with impatience within his Dusk Ball, igniting The Guy's mind even further.

He viciously lifted another stone and hurled it off of the cliff side. Dirt. Golurk's Dusk Ball quaked with immense power, rattling The Guy's shaken thoughts beyond control.

Another rock lay near the concave castle corner. With his teeth grinding, he punted it savagely against the castle wall, shattering it and making a permanent damaging crack in the fortress. Gravel. Jellicent's Dusk Ball began to rumble as shadow energy began to emanate from within. The energy leeched The Guy's focus, making him unaware of everything around except for the rocks and what he was looking for. He felt his thoughts beginning to turn hazy and unfocused, but he didn't care. The only thing that mattered at that moment was Tyranitar's possible existence. The powerful surge of desperation continued to eat away at his thoughts, turning his search into a savage scramble.

As he sprinted toward another stone, Fuzh emerged from around the corner, breathing heavily and barely standing. "You're going to get us c-" He looked up at The Guy, and immediately, his face twisted in horror. As another rock was flung off of the cliff side, The Guy turned around briefly, searching for the next. What he looked like made Fuzh freeze in fear.

His eyes were no longer a pale yellow, but were burning an unholy pale pink, like Chandelure's fire. His fists were glowing black, like Golurk's as he used Shadow Punch. The aura around him that was normally a pale blue was now a monochromatic grey. All six of the glassy Dusk Balls at his waist were brightly glowing different colors; a fiery red, a sandy grey, a bright pink, a sickly green, a haunting violet, and a bright pale grey.

But what was most frightening was his white hoodie. It was violently dripping with blood everywhere that The Guy dashed to. Every time he stopped, every time he changed direction, more blood would spill out of his jacket as if he himself had many mortal wounds in his body. Looking at the splattered blood upon the ground would make one think that a massacre had taken place here.

"WHERE ARE YOU!?" The Guy screamed at the top of his voice, ignoring all subtlety they had achieved. His voice didn't sound like one, but seven different vocals. Six of them sounded like...

Serperior.

Musharna.

Gigalith.

Scrafty.

Durant.

Reshiram.

Fuzh stared at the monstrous demon before him as he relentlessly flattened the landscape they stood upon. He dashed from rock to rock, pummeling and throwing them out of the way trying to find the sage's Pokeballs as if his very existence depended upon it. It was as if his pokemon had completely taken a hold of his conscious.

"WHERE?!" The Guy slammed his fist into the largest rock that remained, shattering it into dozens of pieces. Chunks of stone vaulted from the impact, and Fuzh lifted his arms to shield himself from the mass of debris. His form, his follow-through, everything about it looked as if a Golurk had thrown the punch...

The Guy stopped after shattering the boulder, staring downward. Fuzh slowly lowered his arms, assuming that he was finished. He motioned as if he was going to speak, but no sound escaped his throat.

Slowly, the burning in his eyes subsided as they focused on the ground before him. His aura returned to a calm blue. The light that blazed from the Dusk Balls dimmed, returning to their glassy forms. The hoodie stopped dripping with blood, but the dark red blood upon the ground remained. Everything about the savage demon that Fuzh had the horror of watching rampage had subsided, as if nothing had happened. What on earth did he just witness...?

The Guy didn't move, but only stared downward. His thoughts slowly returned to being rational once more as he felt the strange surge fade. '(What... What just happened...?)' he weakly thought. His pokemon yielded no response. He was going to ask once more, but the objects at his feet stopped him.

"D-did you find something...?" Fuzh timidly inquired.

It was a decorated leather belt. Engraved with multiple images of pokemon and the Team Plasma emblem, the belt had five broken hinges on it for holding Pokeballs. However...

"What did you find?" Fuzh asked as he walked up to The Guy cautiously. He looked down in the same direction as he did and stopped.

There appeared to have been five Pokeballs. Two of them seemed to have been shattered from the fall.

'((The pokemon within must have been killed,)' he thought, '(...but...)'

A third Pokeball lay shattered as well, but much more thoroughly. The many pieces of the Pokeball lay in a depression in the ground, surrounded in blood. It wasn't the blood from the hoodie.

"This dip in the ground..."'The Guy said as he knelt down toward the finding. "It seems to be a...footprint..."

He stared at the shattered Pokeball within the footprint. '(No... Please god no...)' His gaze slowly moved from the crushed Pokeball over to two more Pokeballs on the side. They had safely opened.

'(Please, oh merciful God no...)' Massive waves of tension built up in his mind as he and his pokemon felt a sense of dread building.

From the two opened Pokeballs, there appeared to be a disturbance in the ground between them and the edge of the cliff.

'(No...no, no, no, no...)' His shared mind became a symphony of discord as sounds twisted and swirled until nothing was audible. Only that which he visually saw made any sense, and it terrified them all.

He walked slowly down the markings in the ground. On the edge of the cliff, several black feathers still attached to a mangled chunk of bleeding flesh hung from a jagged plant.

'(Please don't tell me...)' Tears of fear began to well in his eyes.

He looked down the cliff face. At the base of the cliff, a shredded Honchcrow laid dead in a pool of feathery blood against the sharp stone cliff side. Its back was filled with Stone Edge. Near the corpse were several pieces of discarded resistance equipment.

His mind was swallowed into a living nightmare. The cliff face, the castle, his incorporeal form, Fuzh, everything around him blurred and began spinning in his vision.

'(He's alive...)' He tightly gripped his head, twisting in agony. "HE'S ALIVE!" he screamed, dropping to his knees. His thoughts melted into an agonizing pool of distress. All of the thoughts that his pokemon thought became mixed with his own until the seven of them were in harmonious hysteria.

"He's alive..." Fuzh uttered, but The Guy couldn't hear him.

His vision twisted and bent morbidly; everything he gazed upon bent into a horribly disfigured abomination. Muffled sounds surrounded him, many of them sounding like screams. His pokemon screamed to him as loudly as their minds could, but they were drowned out from his mental horrification.

Tyranitar... Tyranitar... His image flickered in his wracked mind, taunting him with his murderous gaze that said, "Even without a human's command, I would have broken you. I would have pierced every vital organ in your body and drank your blood until I was sated. And now I'm free."

He leaned forward, catching himself on his shaking hands. Never before, not even when he faced the demon head on had he felt such a mind-numbing fear. All of his being felt weak, the same weakness that he felt after Stone Edge ravaged his physical body.

A blurred sound echoed around him. It sounded like a cannon blast in a long, dark tunnel at first. "...y...y...!"

'(What is that... Why won't it stop?)'

"HEY!"

The Guy's mind was shocked back to the world. His heart jumped, skipping two or three unneeded beats.

"W-what? What?" The Guy blurted, looking around aimlessly.

"It's me, Fuzh," he said.

The Guy looked at him, bewildered. "Oh..." He sat still on his knees, collecting his thoughts. The night air gently gusted by, rustling his hair as well as the ruffled black feathers of the fallen Honchcrow. In the dead of night, Fuzh stood over The Guy as he waited for a response. But, The Guy only sat in silence, trying to absorb the information that bombarded his mind in a few hectic moments.

The night sky was littered with tiny white sparks that gently flickered against the black void around them. A sharp crescent moon divided the starry sky, looking more like a bladed razor than a beacon of light. Several small clouds lingered silently near the blade, and its silvery pale light shined through the space between, bathing the castle corner in discomforting moonlight. The Guy was illuminated by the reflected sunlight, but his image remained the same. On his knees, he looked downward, mimicking a man who was mourning the loss of a loved one. His journey was far from over.

"...He got away..." he softly mumbled.

Fuzh looked down at him for a moment before turning away, his eyes closed. "I know what that beast is capable of."

The Guy slowly lifted his head, still facing toward the cliff's edge. "I think we both do," he softly spoke. A feeling of calm depression had replaced his recent hysteria. Rather than panic over the current situation, he was overwhelmed by a sense of lost hope, that the worst has come and was not to be gone soon.

"Why..." Fuzh muttered.

The Guy looked up at Fuzh, who had turned away with his fists clenched. "Why didn't I make sure that monster was dead...? I had the power to end him at that moment..."

The Guy turned away once more. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes. "I think you know what we have to do."

The two of them remained facing away from each other, Fuzh standing with his fists clenched and The Guy sitting on the ground. After a deep moment of silence, Fuzh spoke. "We have to find Tyranitar..."

"And kill him."

"And capture him."

They both opened their eyes. Immediately they turned toward each other, clearly in disagreement with each other's plan.

"Capture him? What do you mean capture?" The Guy protested. "Do you plan to reeducate him or something?"

"Of course," Fuzh confidently responded. "How do you think I managed to get the five pokemon Team Plasma bestowed upon me to be on my side? I just need time to teach them-"

"Time to teach them?!" he yelled while standing up. "Have you seen that soulless beast? He's not going to listen to you just because you pull up a chalkboard and start writing the difference between right and wrong!"

Fuzh began to look irritated. "Look, I know that you must have hard feelings against me and Tyranitar, but-"

"Oh really now?!" he exploded.

"Look, stop interrupting me and let me speak."

"No, you listen to me," The Guy interjected. "I don't know whether or not you've ever been on the business end of that devil, but I don't intend on showing him any more mercy than he showed me or the rest of my pokemon." The six Dusk Balls at his belt briefly ignited in their respective colors.

"You're being irrational."

"And you're being narrow-minded."

Fuzh's face showed anger as he stepped forward toward The Guy. "Even if he is a soulless beast, he's still a pokemon. And I intend to give him the same chances at civility that I gave the rest of my team."

The Guy stared into Fuzh's determined eyes, trying to make him back down, but he was not to be intimidated. "And I intend to ensure that nobody else suffers my fate. If you don't intend on saving the lives of who knows how many people, then you'll only get in our way." The Guy turned away from Fuzh and began to walk toward the cliff's edge.

Fuzh put his palm to his face for a moment. "Wait."

The Guy stopped, intending to hear what he had to say.

Fuzh sighed for a moment before continuing. "Look, I know we have different plans in mind, but we shouldn't remain enemies so long as we share a common goal."

The Guy closed his eyes.

"We should at least work together to make sure he's no longer a threat to the world," Fuzh continued. "And after we've established that, we'll see who will claim Tyranitar's fate."

The Guy took a deep breath, clenching his fists. As much as he did not enjoy the aspect of working with Fuzh on the matter at hand, he turned around and nodded.


	13. Chapter 13: Retracing

13 - Retracing

They soundlessly glided through the clear night sky, leaving the Team Plasma castle and pokemon league behind. Grass, trees, cliffs, small houses, and sleeping wild pokemon passed beneath them, undisturbed by the spirits' lack if a shadow. The gentle night air blew back The Guy's black-blue tainted hair as Golurk flew smoothly above the shifting earth below. As they moved through the air, spiritual smog flowed off of The Guy, dissipating a few feet behind them, but making their swift journey mimic a ghostly comet. He sat with his eyes closed, his legs crossed, and his arms folded, deep in his shared thoughts.

_"It'd be more efficient if we split up," said Fuzh. "I'll search the east half of the Unova circle, and you search the west half. Make sure you interrogate as many people as you can about seeing Tyranitar."_

_Fuzh looked around the hazardous landscape. "The sly son of a bitch made sure to cover his tracks as to not be followed..."_

_The Guy looked away with his eyes closed. "We'll meet up in Castalia City, in the pokemon center," he said. "If the other person doesn't show up within five days from now, then whoever is there can continue searching elsewhere."_

_Fuzh nodded in agreement. "Skarmory." In immediate response to his call, his bladed Skarmory soared up from the bottom of the cliff where he had been waiting and landed obediently next to Fuzh. He quickly climbed onto Skarmory's back and looked back at The Guy. "On the fifth sunrise from now."_

_Without another word, Skarmory leapt powerfully off of the ground into the air, taking off southeastward away from the castle. The Guy stood alone in the pale moonlight with his six pokemon in their strange glass spheres as the burst of air dissipated._

He opened his eyes. Below, the last of the glowing Opelucid City and the Route 9 Mall passed beneath them, leaving the rolling hills of Route 9 before them.

'(Five sunrises...)' he thought to himself and his soul-bound companions. '(That should be plenty of time to check Icirrus City, Mistralton City, Driftveil City, and Nimbasa City. Question is how are we supposed to gather the information from people? There's no way we can walk up to every individual and personally ask if they had seen any unusual pokemon activity relating to a Tyranitar in their area.)'

'(So far, that seems to be the only thing we can do)', Dusclops thought.

'(I know,)' The Guy thought back, '(but that would take way too long. We need some way of contacting masses of people...)'

'(What if we were to appear on TV? We could send out a city wide emergency broadcast or something.) Gengar suggested.

'(Hmm... I'm not so sure that would work out. Aside from the challenge on appearing on TV in the first place, how can we be sure people would be watching?)'

'(But…TV…)' she whimpered. The Guy knew she wanted to be on TV.

'(And there's one more thing...)' The Guy began. '(I don't want masses of people beginning to panic over this. If anything, instead of contacting them all, we need only to speak to specific officials in the city.)'

'(That sounds reasonable,)' thought Chandelure.

He adjusted his position on Golurk's back. "Alright Golurk, let's go ahead and head to the Icirrus City pokemon center."

'(Roger,)' Golurk affirmed. Their speed increased as they soared over the lakes and hills of Route 9. There were no trainers out in the black of night, and the usually-popular pathway between Icirrus and Opelucid felt uncomfortable with desertion.

In the small shrubs and tall grass, several small nocturnal pokemon poked their heads out to gaze at the spirits that drifted through the black sky. Many of them looked on with an expression of awe, wondering what strange creature was flying atop a rogue Golurk's back. A small handful understood what he was, flinching and crawling back into seclusion to avoid any chance of getting involved with the stray spirit's agenda.

"You know..."

Golurk looked up at The Guy, wondering what he had to say.

"What if Tyranitar has already fled the region? What if he's smart enough to understand that somebody other than Team Plasma may be after him?"

Golurk and the rest of his pokemon were silent. The Guy looked down toward the route below. Miles and miles of shifting terrain patterned the natural walkway that was surrounded by an unorthodox mix of both trees and lakes. Everything in the area was placid and peaceful, undisturbed by any rogue monster.

As Golurk jetted across Route 9, a large pack of Drifblim boundlessly floated in the wind in front of them. The Guy and Golurk watched them tumbling and rolling here and there as the gentle night air brushed them along in a direction they did not mind. Both of them watched the Drifblim in envy, wanting to join them in boundless drifting across the sky carelessly, nudged by a gentle breeze in the direction that the natural air current decided to carry them.

He looked to the six dusk balls at his side, one of which did not emanate with a ghostly glow: Golurk's Dusk Ball. He wished to himself that stress was one thing that did not accompany them in death, that they could simply forget their troubles and experience eternal rest. But they could not. So long as they drew dead breath, so long as death incarnate cursed the world with his existence, none of them would know peace.

'(We'll find him...)' he thought as he closed his eyes once more, waiting to arrive in Icirrus City to begin the search. '(We'll find him if we have to circle the world twice.)'


	14. Chapter 14: Searching the City of Rain

14 - Searching the City of Rain

Daybreak shone across the glistening waters of the Moor of Icirrus in a brilliant flare of dazzling morning light, greeting the gently stirring pokemon of Route 8. Palpitoad and Stunfisk flopped around in the water, getting their daily coating of smooth mud to keep them cool. A group of Shelmet paraded by in a loose group. They moved toward the water so they could feed upon the tiny insects that hovered around the marshes. On their way, one Shelmet accidentally stepped onto a hidden Stunfisk, triggering its natural response to shock anything that touched it while giving an inciting grin. Shelmet fell to the ground, twitching at the unexpected shock. Soon, the other Shelmet bunched up around Stunfisk, squeaking and spitting at the little flounder that zapped their friend. As the bunches of pokemon began arguing, a strong gust of wind blasted them from above, making them quiet down and look up at what caused it.

The Guy slowly opened his eyes, not expecting to he greeted by an ever-bright sun in the face. He gently rubbed his now-human eyes, trying to adjust to the brilliant glow of morning's light.

He let out a big, long yawn, stretching his arms and legs out. "Ahhhh... Huh. Didn't know that I could sleep while dead. I don't feel recharged or anything, but it sure was nice." Golurk looked up at him, smiling to himself.

'(Did you know you talk in your sleep?)' Gengar inquired.

"I do? Since when?"

'(Well, you've always talked in your sleep, or at least for as long as I've been with you,)' thought Dusclops.

'(Yeah, but it's pretty hilarious now. Since you're dead, you talk about the weirdest things,)' thought Gengar as she smiled within her Pokeball.

"Oh? And what was it that I was babbling about?"

'(Something about wanting to find Arceus and give him a golden fork that he desperately needed, or some nonsense,)' Chandelure bluntly jumped in.

"Wait, what?"

'(Yeah, none of it made sense, but it was entertaining to listen to.)'

The Guy leaned forward closer to Golurk's head. "Golurk, do I talk in my sleep?"

Without turning back toward him, Golurk let out a badly suppressed laugh.

The Guy's face turned red as he blushed embarrassingly. "Why didn't you guys tell me that? That's humiliating!"

Golurk let out a big bellowed and metallic laugh as the other five laughed loudly, some more loudly than others. Gengar and Froslass were practically rolling around in their Pokeballs, which didn't help The Guy's confidence at all. He quietly folded his arms and waited for them to quiet down, an expression of annoyance on his reddened face.

Up ahead, the trees began to thin, creating a visible opening in the dense marsh. Just barely peeking out above a few of the trees was the shingled brown roof of a small building.

The Guy sat up straighter on Golurk, trying to get a better view of the terrain. "Alright you guys, looks like we're getting close to Icirrus. You all remember the plan, correct?"

'(Yup,)' assured Chandelure.

'(Got it,)' Dusclops confirmed.

'(Get the golden fork. Right,)' poked Musharna. The Guy's face turned sour at her jest.

'(And give it to Arceus. Roger,)' Froslass joined in.

'(Who needs it as soon as possible. Affirmative,)' Gengar giggled.

"...Eh..." The Guy blurted, burying his face into the palm of his hand. Golurk turned around toward him, smiling to himself once more. Across the horizon, a series of wooden bridges and buildings with windmills attached to them began to emerge.

'(It looks like we're here,)' Golurk thought.

The Guy stopped himself from punching several of the Pokeballs to look ahead. The old-world style buildings of Icirrus City quickly became visible as the thinning trees below passed behind them. Surrounding the buildings was acre after acre of flooded land, remaining ever marshy from the heavy downpours of rain that kept the swamps around alive for centuries. Beneath them, fields of flooded rice patties stretched on for miles, occasionally broken by a small house or two. Icirrus City always was the leading producer of rice in the Unova region.

The Guy looked below at the scattered workers and their pokemon who dredged along in the wetlands, tending to the rice plants. Several of them looked up to see him riding on the back of Golurk, and they gave a friendly smile and a wave. The Guy smiled back and returned the welcoming gesture. He had forgotten how kind the people in Icirrus were.

Golurk and The Guy looked down at all of the workers in the fields as they flew by. Accompanying some of the workers were some pokemon, such as Sawk, Throh, Karrablast, Palpitoad, and the occasional Mienfoo. Watching them working on the rice patties made The Guy crave rice, even though he didn't eat.

The miles of rice fields passed by, but the ground beyond them was still spotted with large puddles of water on top of saturated soil. Somehow, some buildings were built in these conditions, and they became more and more plentiful the longer they flew toward the heart of the swampy city.

'(Wow,)' Froslass thought. '(How can people live in a place like this? There's way too much water around here.)'

'(Well,)' Dusclops replied, '(you do come from Victory Road, where there's nothing but dry cliff sides and hollow caves. What did you expect?)'

'(I feel like if I was still a Durant and I was to try to live here, I'd drown in a puddle.)'

'(Hmm,)' Jellicent began, '(I kind of like this place. Probably because I'm an overgrown jellyfish now, but seeing all of this water makes me want to splash around.)' She smiled within her Pokeball.

'(How's about you be the one to accompany me around town while we try to gather information about Tyranitar?)' asked The Guy.

'(Could I? I feel as though a ghostly jellyfish might make some people unnerved.)'

'(But you're a pokemon. As far as anybody else is concerned, I'm your trainer; in fact, I am your trainer.)'

Jellicent lightly chuckled to herself. '(I suppose that's true... Alright then!)' she cheerily bubbled.

'(Just keep in mind that if you need to talk to me, all you have to do is be in physical contact with me, like Golurk here. Right Golurk?)'

Golurk let out a loud assuring clanking sound from his throat. '(Yep. So long as you're touching him in some way, like how he's sitting on my spine.)'

"Oops," he blurted aloud, adjusting himself. "Sorry about that."

Below, the last of the rural parts of Icirrus City rolled past them. Ahead, a plaza of medium sized buildings sat atop a scattered bunch of elevated hills that held the buildings above the slippery marshes below. From cliff to cliff, bridges connected the city's buildings in a well-constructed web of wooden walkways. Looking at the heart of Icirrus City from above made one feel a deep sense of community that could only be established by hard work, innovative creativity that was shared among all of the residents, and a hearty feeling of a simpler life, where there were fruit stands here and there as well as a fishery at the bottom of the docks. The residents of Icirrus City were known for having simpler, happier lives.

Near the bottom of a steep walkway, a familiar building with a red roof sat wedged underneath of an overpassing bridge: the pokemon center.

"Alright guys, here we are. Let's go ahead and land."

On his command, Golurk slowed his forward momentum as he began to descend. A few people who were walking across the bridge above the pokemon center watched as they arrived, greeting them with a smile and a quick wave. The Guy, being courteous, returned the kind acknowledgement just as they passed under the bridge. Not many people were near the pokemon center's entrance, but through the glassy double doors, The Guy could see the usual population of people who enjoyed resting inside.

Golurk smoothly landed onto the soft ground with a light, muddy splash. The Guy jumped off of his shoulders and deftly landed onto the soggy ground below, being a bit more fortunate and landing on a drier patch of earth without splashing mud onto his legs.

He looked up to his large pokemon. "Thanks, Golurk."

Golurk nodded at him as the third Pokeball at The Guy's belt fired its usual beam of beige light onto him, quickly dematerializing him into his comfortable little soul pouch, where he could see from his trainer's eyes.

The Guy snapped the fourth Pokeball off of his belt and held it out in his open palm. "Come on out, Jellicent." The red and white Pokeball popped open in a beam of black light that quickly shaped itself into Jellicent's shape. Jellicent looked at The Guy, who was placing her Pokeball back onto his belt loop. Behind him, a large, rather deep puddle of water tempted her.

"Mmk, ready to head insi-" he began before hearing a large splash of mud from behind him. Jellicent was splashing around happily in the rainwater, rolling back and forth. The Guy smiled. '(She must love the feel of water now,)' he thought.

From above, he heard some multi-aged giggles. The Guy looked up. Two small children and their parents were looking over the side of the bridge down toward them, lightheartedly laughing. He smiled and waved to them.

"Is that your Jellicent?" the woman called out to him.

Jellicent looked up at them. "Yeah, she's really enjoying the water around here," The Guy replied, smiling.

"She's adorable!" the lady yelled back. Her two kids were jumping up and down, tugging at their father's pant leg and pointing at Jellicent. Jellicent smiled and waved to them with one of her light pink tendrils, and the children giggled and waved back.

"Hehe, thank you!" The Guy called out as the father called for them to move on toward the fruit stand nearby. '(I really like this city,)' he thought. '(The people here are just how I remember them from when we were last here.)'

'(This place really is nice,)' Gengar thought. '(Perhaps we should consider living here?)'

The Guy felt a soft tentacle on his left shoulder. '(I wouldn't mind staying here,)' Jellicent thought. '(This place is great!)'

'(Yeah,)' he thought, '(it really is...)'

Images flashed in his mind of his pokemon and him in his ghostly image reaching out to people who were screaming and running away from them. They try to explain, but everyone panics and flees the city, leaving them all alone in the abandoned plaza.

The Guy's face turned sour. '(On second thought, perhaps we shouldn't...)'

'(Yeah, good point...)' thought Dusclops.

'(Well, let's decide that later. For now, let's pop into the pokemon center and ask the nurse if anything has been spotted. Although, when you think about it, this town is too peaceful for there to have been anything done by him.)'

'(Can't hurt to look,)' thought Golurk.

'(Well, yeah, I'm just saying.)' The Guy turned toward the pokemon center. Behind the clean glass double doors, he could see several people walking around toward the sides of the room while the nurse patiently waited at her desk in case anybody needed help with anything.

'(Oh, Gengar. I had a quick question,)' he thought as he approached the automated doorway.

'(What's that?)' she pondered.

'(Well, I didn't really say anything about it earlier, but when we fought against Fuzh in that decrepit alleyway, Bisharp had hit you lethally with a sharpened Arial Ace. Are you ok after that?)'

'(Strangely enough, yes. When the blade pierced my heart, right here,)' he felt Gengar motioning where her heart was, but he couldn't see exactly what she was doing, '(my entire body went numb, and I couldn't move one bit. But, I'm still here!)'

'(Do you need to get a healing session while we're here?)'

'(I think, somehow, I've recovered from that blow. I feel like I could jump around like normal.)'

'(Hmm... Interesting...)' he softly thought as he stepped through the doorway.

"Hello! Welcome!" the nurse called out from the counter in a bubbly way.

The Guy motioned a wave. "Hello." He looked around for a bit. It was your generic pokemon center, very orthodox and easy to navigate. Several trainers and pokemon enthusiasts were seated at some of the tables along the walls, discussing this and that about their experiences, some even turning into quiet arguments. On the sides of the help desk were stairways that led to the second floor, where they had computer simulators set up so that one could have a virtual reality encounter with other people from across the lands, where people could trade, battle, or just get to know each other. The Guy never really used those functions during his travels.

From behind the help desk, a technological marvel of a machine was placed behind the nurse within arm's reach. With the use of this advanced machine, a pokemon with ordinary injuries could be healed to fighting fit in only a few minutes. Beside the machine was a doorway, which The Guy suspected led to some kind of surgical room.

With hope of an easy journey in his mind, The Guy approached the help desk where the young nurse waited, smiling. '(Alright guys. Time to flip the first coin.)' His pokemon were quiet.

"Can I help you?" the lady asked.

"Hi, I actually just have a quick question regarding..." he leaned in closer, trying to be discrete, "...It's in regards to a pokemon that might be in the area. A dangerous pokemon."

The lady's face grew more serious. "A dangerous pokemon in the area?" she said with failed subtlety.

"Shh!" The Guy spattered at her loud voice. Several trainers turned their heads in their direction. "I'm trying to not have a lot of people know about this, because it may cause a panic. There's a pokemon I'm tracking, a rogue Tyranitar. Have you seen anything related to one in the area?"

The nurse lightly rested her head on the side of her hand, tilting her head in a way that was cute while at the same time dumb. "Hmm, no I don't believe I've seen anything related to a Tyranitar around here." Her voice was quite audible.

"Tshhhh!" The Guy protested.

Several trainers' heads poked up at her words. One of them called out, "Tyranitar? A Tyranitar near Icirrus?"

The Guy turned around, a bad poker face splashed across his head. "No, no! There's nothing of the sort around here!"

"But didn't you just say-" the nurse began just before The Guy looked at her sharply.

"A Tyranitar in the area? I want in on that!" a young trainer said from the back.

"Yeah, me too!" called out a portly man to the right.

Cold sweat ran down the back of The Guy's head. '(Crap...)'

"Tyranitar's a really strong pokemon!" a blonde girl exclaimed.

"Let's go find it!" the portly man rejoined.

"Yeah!" many people exclaimed.

The Guy jumped up in front of the doorway; Jellicent hovered above him with her tendrils out. "Stop!" he yelled. As he held his arms up, the parade of overzealous trainers halted. "There is no Tyranitar in the area! I was checking to see if there was one in hopes of catching it!" he halfway lied.

The mob of people stared at him for a moment before a young trainer spoke up. "But why would a Tyranitar be in these parts?"

"Well, um, you know," he paused, "some of them roam, and I just wanted to see if there was any activity around here..." As he spoke his eyes drifted up and away from the crowd.

'(Very smooth, captain)' Chandelure taunted.

'(Shut it!)' he loudly thought. "I don't suppose any of you folks have seen anything?" The entire crowd shook their heads. "Alright... Well I'll be off then..."

With a wave of murmurs, the energy of the situation died down, and the crowd dispersed back into their selective spots around the pokemon center, many of the trainers disappointed. The Guy let out a deep sigh as he dropped his arms back down to his sides. '(That was way too close...)'

'(Close?)' Froslass thought. '(That nurse downright blew our cover in less than five seconds!)'

'(Yeah,)' Dusclops added, '(Now word of Tyranitar is generally in the air, so I guess we can blow subtlety out the window and just get straight to asking questions.)'

'(Yeah...)' The Guy thought as he felt one of Jellicent's arms gently rest on his shoulder.

'(That was really close to disaster,)' she thought to him.

'(Tell me about it,)' he replied mentally. '(The last thing we need are a bunch of hyperactive trainers pursuing death. Could you imagine if they went after him and found him?)'

Jellicent shivered slightly. '(I'd prefer not thinking about that.)'

He turned around and began to walk out of the opened double doors. '(Yeah, well let's try and make sure that doesn't happen next time we interrogate people.)'

'(So where should we head to next?)' Golurk asked.

'(Hmm...)' The Guy looked around for a moment. All around them were mini hills and cliffs with buildings atop them. Around those, marshy wetlands extended all the way down to the rice patty fields. '(I'm really not sure if there's any other place to check around here... The pokemon center is pretty much the apex of trainers in this city...)'

He and his pokemon quietly thought for a moment, trying to imagine if there's any other place to check.

'(The gym,)' Dusclops thought, finally.

'(Gym?)' The Guy looked around. '(What gym? I don't remember there being one in this city.)'

'(The ice gym. The one with the slippery ice ramps and floors.)' Gengar added.

The Guy tried to picture the gym. His face brightened in realization. '(Oh yeah! THAT gym.)' Images of Scrafty landing repetitive Hi Jump Kicks to a bunch of random ice type pokemon flashed through his memory.

The Guy lightly scratched the back of his head. '(I'd forgotten that gym existed after we blew through it in a few minutes, thanks to you, Scrafty.)' Gengar happily beamed within her Pokeball. '(Good idea, though. The gym leader tends to be somewhat of a kingpin in each city. If they don't know anything about a Tyranitar in the area, nobody will.)'

The Guy turned around, trying to get a sense of direction as to where he was in the damp city. The pokemon center loomed over him, obstructing most of his view. He closed his eyes, trying to recall where he was. He vaguely recalled the gym being located on a relatively high cliff, and behind it was...

'(Dragonspiral Tower,)' he thought. '(I at least remember where that is.)'

'(If we head toward that,)' Golurk thought, '(We should find the gym in no time.)'

Froslass shifted within her Pokeball. '(Lead the way. Me and Reshiram here have no clue where any of the gyms are, right Reshy?)'

'(Pretty much,)' Reshiram thought. '(And don't call me Reshy.)'

Froslass shifted into a relaxing position, trying to get comfortable. '(My point is we can just relax until we get there.)'

'(Whatever you say,)' Jellicent echoed as she sat on The Guy's head.

The Guy had already begun walking, sporting his bright pink Jellicent hat as he headed in the direction of Dragonspiral Tower. "You're not going to fall asleep, are ya?" he said to Jellicent as she curled her arms around his neck.

'(No, no. I'm just gonna- zzz...)'

The Guy smiled as he looked up at the fluffy jellyfish perched on his head.


End file.
